Potatoes are selling for just Tk 12 a kilogram at the gates of cold stores in Rangpur district. By farmers' reckoning, a 55 kg sack costs about Tk 825 to grow and put into storage, yet at that price it sells for Tk 660. Growers say taking their potatoes out now would mean a loss of Tk 15 to 16 on every kilogram.
They break the cost down like this: Tk 375 cold-storage rent per sack, Tk 100 for the empty sack, Tk 50 to carry it to the store and Tk 20 in labour. Add fertiliser, pesticide, irrigation, seed and field labour, and one sack comes to about Tk 825.
Borhan Uddin, a farmer from Chengmari village in Mithapukur upazila, grew TVS, Stick and Shil potatoes on 5 bighas last season. He puts his production cost for TVS and Stick at more than Tk 27 a kilogram. Ataur Rahman of Ranipukur union planted 49 bighas this year; he says that last year 69 bighas cost him nearly Tk 57 lakh, money he never recovered. Bhupal Chandra Roy, a farmer in Rangpur city, has 500 sacks in two cold stores and has decided not to sell for now rather than take the loss.
According to the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), the eight districts of Rangpur division produced 5,176,687 tonnes of potatoes on 197,616 hectares this season. The division's 124 cold stores took in 1,194,592 tonnes, 23.1 percent of the harvest, and 73.8 percent of what was stored (882,288 tonnes) is still in the stores.
The Department of Agricultural Marketing (DAM) puts this year's national potato harvest at 11.785 million tonnes. Some 3,390,057 tonnes were stored in 402 public and private cold stores and 703 non-refrigerated model stores: 2,444,148 tonnes of table potatoes and 945,910 tonnes of seed. Rangpur district's 42 cold stores hold 488,638 tonnes of table and seed potatoes.
Subhas Mukherjee, manager of the Shahjalal cold store in Badarganj and the MNT store in Gangachara, said potatoes have been selling at the gate for Tk 11 to 14 a kilogram, depending on the variety, for several days. The two stores hold 15,000 and 9,500 tonnes and are now 40 and 48 percent full. By Samakal's calculation, if the crop sells at today's prices, Rangpur division's potato farmers could lose more than Tk 5,000 crore.
S M Abu Bakar Saiful Islam, additional director of the DAE's Rangpur region, said farmers have been losing money on potatoes for two years because they are not planning what they plant, and output is several times demand. The department is advising them to put some land under maize, vegetables and rice instead of potatoes alone.
Photo: NahidSultan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0); potatoes for sale in a Bangladeshi market.
Source: samakal
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