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“This year the weather is favourable for potato production, and we expect the state to produce about 100 lakh tonne of crop this year,” said said Patit Paban De of the West Bengal Cold Storage Association.
At present, the price of Pukhraj variety of potato is hovering between Rs 470-500 per quintal. Harvesting for the Jyoti variety is slightly delayed due to the cold weather, which has kept the shoots green longer than usual.
This year, prices of potato seeds in West Bengal have gone up by almost 50% over the last year. The state imports more than 70% of its total seed requirement from Punjab. In addition, sharp rise in fertilizer prices has added to the cost of production. The cost of per 50 kg bag of urea has gone up from Rs 700-800 last year to almost Rs 1300-1400 this year, according to potato traders.
As a result, the cost of farming of potato this year has been about Rs 400 per quintal, against Rs 260-270 per quintal last year.
Notably, last year, West Bengal saw a dip in potato production due to unfavorable climatic conditions. The state produced 85 lakh tonnes of the commodity last year.
In view of the rising prices, the state government had banned export of potatoes to anywhere else in the country. On August 1, the Forward Markets Commision (FMC) has suspended futures trading in potatoes from West Bengal to control volatility in prices. In addition last year in Uttar Pradesh, which produces around 14 million tonne of potato in a normal year, the production was down by around 20%.
As a result, potato prices in West Bengal had surged from around Rs 700 per quintal in March to about Rs 1,000 per quintal by August this year.
Meanwhile, last year, instead of getting good prices due to lower supply, the farmers had been suffering continuous losses. In December last year, with the Punjab government providing transport subsidy to its farmers for excess potato production, at least 20,00,000 tonne of potato entered West Bengal in the month of December, leading to a price crash.
Moreover, in absence of adequate number of cold storages, a large quantity of potato had gone into waste.
The domestic consumption of potatoes in Bengal is three to four million tonne. The rest is exported to exporting the rest to Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Assam and parts of Andhra Pradesh. West Bengal accounts for 30% of the country’s potato production.
