About 30,000 maunds of potatoes kept in cold storage in Madaripur in the hope of a better price have rotted. The cold-store management puts their value at current market rates at around Tk 30 million.

The potatoes — roughly 20,000 sacks of 60 kg each — were placed in Madaripur Cold Storage in March 2025 and belonged to the facility's owner, Mir Habibur Rahman. He held them back waiting for a good market, but the price he wanted never came, and by September 2026 the stock was still in the store, where it spoiled.

The management says potatoes are normally held for at most ten months from the storage season to keep their quality. Kept longer than that, the stock's temperature and condition deteriorated and the sacks began to give off a stench. The potatoes are no longer fit for human consumption; for the past two days the better sacks have been sorted out and given free to local farmers and livestock keepers as cattle feed.

Ali Ahmad, a resident of Rajoir union who came to collect some, said the potatoes could not be eaten by people, but the sounder ones were being taken for cattle.

Local potato traders said that had the stock been released in time to meet demand, the district would have needed fewer potatoes trucked in from elsewhere. Vegetable wholesaler Khabiruddin said holding the crop for so long in pursuit of a bigger profit had caused the loss; selling while the potatoes were sound would have cut both the hoarder's loss and the local market's dependence on other districts. Traders added that bringing potatoes in from outside has raised their procurement and transport costs.

Habibur Rahman said the cause of the spoilage was not yet certain; he suspected a mechanical fault inside the cold store and planned to bring experts from Dhaka to examine it. Madaripur agricultural marketing officer Rubel Mia said he would inspect the facility and look into why the potatoes were held so long and how they were lost. The report is by Krishi Shomoy's Madaripur correspondent.

Source: Krishi Shomoy