Farmers face obstacles selling Red Gram in Nalgonda Market
Telangana | Written by : Suryaa DeskNalgonda: Farmers who arrived at the agricultural market yard here on Monday to sell red gram were forced to wait for hours to enter the premises of the market yard.
Tractors and vehicles loaded with red gram lead to a long queue at the market yard forcing farmers to carry the produce on their shoulders and it took more than two hours for the farmers to take their produce to the market yard.
Hyderabad Agricultural Cooperative Association (HACA) is purchasing red gram from farmers at four centres- Nalgonda, Chandur, Haliya and Konda Mallepally, in the district. The minimum support price (MSP) of red gram was also fixed at Rs 5,400 per quintal and the production of red gram in the district was nearly 1.33 lakh quintals this year as the cultivation of the crop was taken up by farmers on 22,210 acres of land in the district.
Due to closure of market yards for two consecutive days, nearly 500 farmers arrived at Nalgonda market yard with their red gram crop that put the officials of the Marketing Department in a fix.
The red gram farmers also stood in long queues at the HACA counter, which will issue receipts for sale of their produce at the market yard.
Due to improper arrangements, farmers were forced to wait at the market yard. As the purchase price of red gram was just Rs 4,000 per quintal in the open market, nearly Rs 1,500 less than the MSP, the farmers preferred to sell their crop at the HACA purchasing centres only.
Speaking to Telangana Today, K Paramesh, a red gram farmer from Thipparthy, said that he brought the produce to Nalgonda market yard two days ago and is still waiting to weigh it, adding that there were no proper facilities, such as drinking water, at the market yard.
Another farmer, P Kasa, who brought his red gram to Nalgonda market yard, said that the production of red gram was three quintals per acre and that the MSP of red gram was also insufficient to meet the expenditure of cultivating the crop. He demanded a MSP of Rs 7,000 per quintal of red gram.
After coming to know about the issues at the Nalgonda market yard, BJP Kisan Morcha State president Goli Madhusudhan Reddy, BJP district president Nookala Narsimha Reddy and others arrived at the market yard and staged a protest demonstration demanding immediate purchase of red gram from the farmers.