Sonepur: About 80 per cent of people in Subarnapur district solely depend on agriculture.
Besides paddy, farmers also raise vegetables, potatoes, onions and other cash crops to supplement their income, but for lack of cold stores for vegetables, they have to go for distress sale most of the time, a report said.
The government has plans for setting up small cold stores to help farmers to preserve their agricultural produce, but no concrete step is being taken in this regard, it was alleged.
During harvesting time, farmers have no preservation facilities to store their vegetables. As a result, traders cash in on the situation and buy their produce at throwaway prices, while prices of vegetable are soaring in towns and cities.
Owing to this perennial problem, farmers fail to get the right price of their produce. According to reports, vegetables are cultivated in 5,000 hectares in the Kharif season and 9,000 hectares in the Rabi season in this district.
Water resources that are available in the form of many rivers and creeks hold much potential for growth of agriculture and horticulture in this district, farmers said.
They lamented that there are no cold storage facilities in the district due to apathy of the government. As a result, farmers have to sell off their produce immediately after the harvest at very low prices.
They alleged that a few years back, the government had accounted to set up cold stores in each block. Leaders, in various meetings, had announced to set up a cold store at Tarabha area, but still there is no effort whatsoever to set up the project.
Reports said that huge quantities of vegetables like parbal, tomato, brinjal, long beans, lady’s fingers, cucumbers, bitter guard, onion, garlic, potato, chilli and other vegetables are cultivated in Sonepur, Binika, Tarabha, Ullunda and Birmaharajpur blocks.
Some farmers pointed out that due to the shortage of cold storage facilities in district, most of them go for distress sale of their produce, apart from incurring additional expenditure on transportation.
Cold storage facilities are must for farmers in this agrarian district. The support that the government should provide to farmers is not available, they alleged. In 2014-15, the state government launched the Potato Mission and encouraged farmers to take up onion farming too.
But onion and potato rot for lack of preservation facilities. At that time, farmers had no way but to sell the produce at throwaway prices. Dunguripalli RMC had moved a proposal for a cold store.
It was also approved by the Horticulture department. Land was acquired for the project at Goramahula. Then, the RMC prepared a detailed project report and sent it to the government. But it is yet to approve the DPR.
The then Collector Manisha Banerjee had written to the director of Odisha State Agriculture and Marketing Board in this regard, but no step was taken in this direction, it was learnt.
When asked, secretary of the Dunguripalli RMC, Udit Kumar Babu said that the state government is emphasising on small cold stores.
“There are plans to set up cold stores with total capacity of 600 tonnes at Garamahula under Tarabha block, Bisimunda and Kalapathar market yard under Sonepur block,” he added.
PNN