Farmers have also complained about procedural difficulties, stating that even elderly farmers holding pattadar passbooks are required to be physically present to give thumb impressions for selling their produce at the market yard.
Adilabad: The National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation (NAFED) has begun collecting samples from soybean bags brought by farmers to the Adilabad market yard to assess quality and will procure the crop only if it meets prescribed norms.
Farmers are awaiting relaxations in quality standards from the Union ministry of agriculture, as NAFED officials are rejecting rain-affected soybean that has shown colour changes. Officials are checking whether the soybean brought by farmers falls within permissible quality parameters and are refusing to procure produce that does not meet the norms.
As a result, soybean farmers are incurring heavy transportation and hamali charges for bringing their produce to the market, only to face rejection. While the Centre has fixed a Minimum Support Price (MSP) of Rs 5,328 per quintal for soybean, many farmers are being forced to sell to private traders at lower rates of around Rs 3,800 per quintal after NAFED rejects their produce citing poor quality.
Farmers have also complained about procedural difficulties, stating that even elderly farmers holding pattadar passbooks are required to be physically present to give thumb impressions for selling their produce at the market yard.
It is learnt that nearly 3,000 quintals of soybean were brought to the Adilabad market yard on Monday by farmers from Pochera and Landasangi villages in Adilabad Rural mandal, Jamidi village in Tamsi mandal and Deepaiguda in Jainad mandal. Staff of the Central Warehousing Corporation collected samples from the soybean bags instead of directly procuring the produce.
Rajesh, a farmer from Pochera, said a large number of soybean farmers were in distress as NAFED was refusing procurement on quality grounds. He added that farmers were willing to accept a reasonable cut in the MSP for rain-affected soybean.
CWC officials informed farmers that procurement would be done only after confirming that the soybean met permissible quality limits. Meanwhile, some farmers staged a protest at the Bela sub-market yard by sitting atop rejected soybean bags after nearly 700 quintals were turned away by NAFED.
Distressed farmers and leaders of farmers’ organisations from Adilabad later met Union minister for coal and mines G. Kishan Reddy, urging him to intervene and ensure that the Union agriculture ministry relaxes quality norms to allow procurement of rain-affected soybean. Tourism minister Jupally Krishna Rao also requested Kishan Reddy to impress upon the agriculture ministry to issue clear instructions to NAFED to procure rain-hit soybean and provide relief to farmers.
