Why farmers prefer selling wheat to silos of Adani group: Proximity, less weighing hassle

However, they are actually not selling the crop to the Adani group but to central government’s Food Corporation of India (FCI). It is the FCI that has rented out silos of Adani’s to stock the procured grain by them.

The silos, which is operational since 2007 and has a capacity to store 2-lakh tonnes of grain, is getting around 80,000 to 90,000 tonnes grain directly from the farmers every wheat season. Farmers come here through their arhtiyas (commission agents) only.

Farmers from villages located at a radius of 15 to 20 km come here to sell their crop. They say that at the silo, they get MSP fixed by the government but here they don’t have to pay unloading and weighing charges and the entire trolly is weighed at once and this saves them Rs 6o to 65 per quintal.

Amandeep Singh Soni, cluster manager of Adani Agri logistic at Moga, told The Indian express that every year they get around 80,000 to 90,000 tonnes wheat directly from farmers and this year also they are expecting the same. “We have been providing the storage place to FCI and in lieu of that, the government pays rent and handling charges to the Adani group as decided by the government agency but the crop is procured by FCI only,” Soni said.

FCI officials added that with this, farmers are getting some benefits and FCI is also saving on transportation charges as farmers bring the crop to FCI storage directly. Also grains need not be filled into the gunny bags so FCI saves on charges also.

Farmer Chamkor Singh of village Khosa Kotala said that he has been bringing his crop for the past few years as his entire trolly is weighed here at once while at the government mandi, small weighing machines are used and it takes time. They also lose 4-5 kg grain per quintal while weighing at the mandi.

Armaandeep Singh of Khosa Pando village said that they bring around 1,500 kg grain in trolly to mandi and it saves them Rs. 1000 per trolly due to automatic weighing, but if grain is not as per the specification laid by the agency then they reject it.

Same were the views of farmer Jagsir Singh of Ghal -Kalan village, Gagandeep Singh of Bukanwala, Vakil Singh of village Baghelewal and Gurdev Singh of village Datta Moga.

There is one more operational silo of the group in Kotkapura (Faridkot district) with a capacity of 25,000 tonnes while two more are in the pipeline in Gurdaspur district. Also Adani’s having another big silo in Kaithal, Haryana, which has a capacity of 2 lakh tonnes and another silo with 50,000 tonnes capacity will be operational soon in Panipat.

In Punjab, there are over a half dozen silos of other groups having capacity between 50,000 tonnes and 1-lakh tonne where grain procured by Centre and state agencies are stored.

Sukhdev Singh Kokrikalan, general secretary of Bharti Kisan Union (Ugrahan), said that in Moga the farmers have been selling their crop directly at the silo for long because it is close to their villages and also they are getting some small benefits.