Faced with glut, potato farmers say: Distribute aloo instead of wheat through PDS

“They can buy potatoes from us at half that price and give it out free just like rice and wheat. It will reduce their worry over low wheat stocks and falling production due to high temperatures. Poor consumers won’t mind getting aloo, which is as good and nutritious as wheat,” says Alamgir.

Doongar Singh Chaudhary (centre) at his cold store in Khandauli near Agra with potato farmer Jeevan Singh (right). Photo: Harish Damodaran

Potato is wholesaling at Rs 400-450 per quintal in Agra. Even this price is only for the ‘chatta‘ or larger table potatoes. The smaller-sized gulla (seed-grade) and kirri (baby) tubers are fetching “no rate”, claims Doongar Singh Chaudhary, owner of a cold store, Vaidyaji Sheetgrah Pvt. Ltd, at Khandauli near Agra: “Forget Reliance, Mother Dairy or BigBasket, nobody is purchasing and stocking up potatoes. Sab nadarad hain (all have vanished)”.

He attributes the lack of buying interest to two factors.

The first is a bumper crop from newer potato varieties, yielding more in lesser number of days. Farmers in Uttar Pradesh’s Agra-Aligarh belt – also covering Mathura, Firozabad, Mainpuri, Hathras, Etah and Kasganj districts – traditionally grow Kufri Bahar, a variety from the Shimla-based Central Potato Research Institute (CPRI) that gives 24-36 tonnes per hectare over 110-120 days duration.

The new varieties – CPRI’s Kufri Sangam, Kufri Mohan and Kufri Khyati, besides privately-bred hybrids such as 302, S-1 and Super 6 – yield 36-42 tonnes/hectare in just 60 days and up to 48-60 tonnes/hectare in 90 days.

Chaudhary estimates the share of area grown under these varieties at 30-35% this season, from 15% in 2021-22 and zero about four years back. “Kufri Bahar is sown during mid-to-late October and harvested by February-end. These you can sow through November and still harvest by February,” he says.

While the new varieties aren’t storable beyond 3-4 months – unlike Kufri Bahar, which has thick skin and can stay in cold stores at 2-4 degrees Celsius for 9-10 months – the higher production from them is what’s flooding the markets now.

A second reason Chaudhary cites is the huge carryover stocks from last year’s harvest. Potato farmers usually sell 15-20% of their crop immediately after harvesting from mid-February to mid-March. The remaining produce they keep in cold stores, which prevent sprouting and enable staggered sales till November-end.

This time, the cold stores were carrying stocks even up to January-end. These, along with the new crop’s arrival from February (especially the high-yielding varieties), have depressed the market: “Only farmers are bringing their produce to us. Big traders and retailers aren’t stocking, as they believe that there is enough aloo to meet their demand in the coming months”.

Prices of gulla aloo collapsed to Rs 200-250 and kirri to Rs 60 per quintal in December-January. “Since kirri aloo was selling at 60 paise per kg from cold stores, the gaushalas (cow shelters) were feeding it to their animals, instead of bhusa (wheat straw) that cost Rs 15/kg,” adds Chaudhary. Low prices of these seed-grade potatoes also induced farmers to sow more area under the tuber this year.

According to Abdul Rashid of Rashid Bhai & Co, a Kanpur-based trader, many garlic growers in Mainpuri-Etah, and even parts of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, have switched to potato this time: “They did so because garlic realisations weren’t good in the last 2-3 years and cheap seed was available. But that has only increased aloo acreage and production”.

For Jeevan Singh, a farmer from Gukhrauli village in Hathras district’s Sadabad tehsil, the only hope is that prices would recover: “The current rates will not cover even my basic cultivation cost of Rs 800/quintal. If I add another Rs 200 for harvesting, grading, bagging, loading and transport, plus Rs 230 towards cold store rental, my total cost comes to nearly Rs 1,250/quintal”. Singh has grown potato on 40, wheat on 8 and mustard on 7 out of his total 55-bigha (4.6 hectares; one hectare=12 bigha) holding.

“The cost of khudai (harvesting) alone has doubled, from Rs 900-1,000 to Rs 1,750-2,000 per bigha, in the last three years. Everything has gone up, except our prices,” complains Lal Singh Jurel, a 125-bigha grower from Kanjauli village in Sadabad tehsil. He, like Singh, deposits his entire harvested tubers at Chaudhary’s cold storage that can stock up to 12,750 tonnes. The latter charges a rental of Rs 230/quintal for the whole season from February 15 to November 30; they can sell from the store anytime during this period.

Cold store owners, apart from earning rent, also finance traders. “If they put in, say Rs 400-600 per quintal, we lend an equivalent amount at 12-18% annual interest to fund their purchase and stocking. But at today’s prices, neither are they willing to put money on aloo and nor can we extend beyond Rs 200-300/quintal,” explains Chaudhary.

UP, incidentally, has India’s largest number (2,406 out of 8,186) as well as capacity (147.14 lakh out of 374.25 lakh tonnes) of cold stores. The maximum number of stores are in the aloo belt districts of Agra (457), Firozabad (235), Etawah (129), Aligarh (120), Hathras (118) and Kannauj (112).

“Government agencies don’t need to go to the mandis. They can procure and distribute directly from the cold stores. By guaranteeing a minimum price, both farmers and the industry will be saved,” adds Alamgir.