Potato sad story - road to more suicides:-(

Really wanted the potato story to be read n its message assimilated..so plugging it separate from that WB blog of yesterday..

Jayasree Singh grows only native traditional potatoes.. they can be stored for a year! Unlike the hybrid ones that is grown mostly, have very short shelf live..but yields a bit more..so the greed takes over..

the previous year was a bumper year for potatoes in Bengal..farmers shud be happy isn’t? but no..sadly that was the year of higher farmer suicides in WB..that is bcos of this variety..the potato that they all grew and had bumper crop had very short shelf life..so farmers always had to sell them immediately after harvest..that wud still be ok as long as the market was ok.. like what happens for onions else where, some traders come in and skew the pick up rate and hoard..still farmers were growing it..but that year when they had bumper crop, due to glut, rates fell..ofcourse traders wud have connived too..

so they had to throw the potatoes and were stuck..those in deep loan loop were forced to commit suicide..such is the market dynamics of farming..not so easy for us all to get a grasp..u never know what hits them..govt policies or high interests or lack of financial support or insurance or lack of fair/right prices or traders cartel or seed monopoly or high input costs..

Jayasree also wrote about it (thankfully in Bengali media and says strongly that if she has to point at one thing that is the reason for farm suicides it is ‘mono crop’)

but sadly, most of the policies of governments today, the thinking of ICAR or agri universities, the seed lobby, cash crop mentality all point to mono crop..

if only they had grown this traditional variety they cud have atleast held on for long and saved.. their lives and livelihoods..how sad..