Robust potato produce has no takers in Agra

Agra, world-famous for the Taj Mahal, is also the biggest potato-producing region in North India, often termed as the potato belt of the country, and accounts for over 8 per cent of the country's potato output.

Being a high-productivity crop, the farmers of this region prefer growing potatoes instead of other seasonal crops.

Less than three weeks back, the UP Minister for Horticulture Narain Singh Suman had predicted, before the state assembly, a 8 to 12 per cent drop in potato production of the state due to the delayed onset of spring in the Agra region.

But less than a fortnight later, as the farmers began harvesting their crop, all loss-assessments by the state government went wrong as against the state's estimated potato production of 8.35 lakh metric tonnes in Agra, the produce this year has already crossed 11.0 lakh metric tonnes, while a lot of farmers are yet to dig their produce.

But this bumper production, combined with an almost negligible export of the crop, has resulted in a serious logistical crisis as most of the produce is lying on the fields and the cold-storages in the region have stopped accepting any more potato claiming that the cold-storages were filled up to their capacity.

Presently, all 160 cold-storage units in the potato belt are displaying 'House Full' boards, turning away trucks and tractor-trolleys loaded with potato sacks.

Talking to Business Standard at the gate of one such cold-storage, Ram Prakash, a farmer from Fatehabad claimed that he took his produce to almost every cold-storage in the region but his storage request had been turned down.

He said that he had almost one thousand potato sacks lying in his field waiting to be stored in cold-storages for the summers, but there was a sheer paucity of storage space in the region and if the state government did not arrange for the transportation of the potato crop into other states, the entire crop will rot in the fields and the farmers of the region will be ruined.