Khammam: A new look and solution on the agriculture and marketing issues in the light of Khammam incident is the need of the hour. Farm and marketing experts want the government to study the matter at micro level and try to find out a solution. Unprecedented arrival of chilli to various markets in the district due to bumper crop and failure of the government machinery in satisfying the farmers pertaining to the prices, who then ransacked the chilli market, has opened a new discussion.
The TS government had earlier campaigned among the farming community not to cultivate cotton by saying that the international situation is not favourable to the produce. Many farmers then opted for chilli and got good yields amidst dry spell conditions. N. Nageswara Rao, a farm analyst. said, “No one in the agricultural department noticed the bumper crop, which brought flood of arrivals to the market. Because of it, there is no Plan A or Plan B.”
There are mechanisms and expertise of companies doing forward trading on farm produce. They analyse the monsoon prior to the kharif and expected arrivals and price of the produce. These companies also study the international conditions to the particular produce and its demand. As per their analysis, they will go through the forward trading.
Surprisingly, the government, that tackles 56 lakh farmers in Telangana, had no such analysis system to give suggestions and advises such situations. Secondly, the Khammam experience taught a lesson to the government about its lack of cold storages. The available cold storages will not at all sufficient to the coming years to keep the farm produce. The government should encourage setting up at least another 50 cold storages immediately.
A. Rama Kotaiah, another farm expert, said, "The government should keep a vigil on traders. How much are they earning by selling the produce in the international market? Are the farmers getting prices to their produce as per the ratio of profit of these traders? How are they cheating the farmers in the market?" He said the government can easily curtail their tactics if it had first hand information on all these activities.
