Farmer Azizul Haque of Kumuria village in Naogaon Sadar upazila grew cauliflower on 10 kathas of land this season. At about 6am on Thursday (9 January) he brought 200 cauliflowers by van to Daktarer Mor, next to the Naogaon-Rajshahi regional highway. After waiting about an hour and a half, he had to sell them for just Tk 400.

Asked about this season's production cost and price, he grew angry. "I grew cauliflower spending Tk 9,000 in hope of a profit. With the sale of the last 200 cauliflowers from my land, my total sales this season stand at just Tk 4,000. The Tk 5,000 of my investment and all my labour are lost," he said.

That day, farmers had been bringing cauliflower by van to Daktarer Mor from across Sadar upazila since dawn. But buyers were very few. As a result, none of the traders buying directly from farmers there was offering more than Tk 2-4 a head. Azizul was not the only farmer angry at the low price.

Naogaon town's large wholesale vegetable market is only 7 kilometres from Daktarer Mor, so almost every trader buying cauliflower at Daktarer Mor was heading by van to the wholesale market to resell it.

One such trader is Samiul Islam Mithu. After buying 400 cauliflowers at Tk 2 each, he was seen selling them to traders at the wholesale market for Tk 4-5 each.

Speaking to Jagonews at the time, Mithu said: "I thought I could sell each cauliflower wholesale for at least Tk 7. But after coming here I see there is a syndicate here too. None of the wholesalers wants to buy for more than Tk 3-4. Yet with one more change of hands, they are selling the same cauliflower to retailers at Tk 10 each."

Asked about Mithu's allegation, wholesaler Mukul Hossain said good-quality cauliflower cannot be had at Tk 4-5 each. "The faria (small) traders who bring cauliflower to us have to be paid Tk 6-7 each. After buying at that price we sell to retailers at Tk 10. There is nothing wrong in this," he said.

Retailers, meanwhile, buy cauliflower from the wholesale market at Tk 9-10 each depending on quality and lay it out for sale at the nearby Goshthatir Mor retail market. After changing hands three times, at the fourth stage the cauliflower is sold to consumers at Tk 15 each.

Asked why a Tk 2 cauliflower sells for Tk 15, Abdul Alim, a retailer at Mohammad Ali Store in the Goshthatir Mor market, said farmers are as always being denied fair prices because of the dominance of the syndicate. To break it, intermediaries in farm-produce marketing must be reduced and markets monitored regularly, and farmers must be allowed to deal directly with retailers. Only then will farmers get fair prices, he said.

Moynul Haque, a farmer from Gobindapur village in Barshail union of Naogaon Sadar upazila, said he spent Tk 80,000 growing cauliflower on 4 bighas, hoping to sell at least Tk 1.5 lakh worth this time. Now even recovering half the cost has become hard: he has received only Tk 20,000 from selling cauliflower from 2 bighas. At the current throwaway prices he expects to lose at least Tk 50,000 this season.

He said that if cauliflower prices keep collapsing through the market syndicate, farmers will turn away from the crop in future. There is no administrative oversight of market monitoring anywhere in the haat, so farmers are forced to sell cheaply, and many will fall into debt this time. Regular market monitoring by the administration is needed to break the syndicate, he said.

Naogaon district agricultural marketing officer Sohag Sarkar strongly disagreed with the farmers' complaints. "There is no syndicate in the market. The market is monitored on about 28 days of the month. Even so, if a syndicate forms, controlling it is not the responsibility of the Department of Agricultural Marketing alone. The task force committee and consumer rights authorities can also take action if they wish," he said. He said the fall in prices is due to a comparatively large increase in the cultivation of early winter vegetable varieties.

Abul Kalam Azad, deputy director of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) in Naogaon, told Jagonews that against a target of 575 hectares, farmers grew cauliflower on 620 hectares in the district this year. The production target had been set at 17,360 tonnes. With favourable weather, there has been a bumper cauliflower crop across the country this time, so buyers from other districts are not coming to Naogaon. This is the main reason farmers are being denied fair prices, he said.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.