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A vintage year for potato farmers
Sohel Parvez
Potato growers are making profits this year on the back of reduced yield, higher demand and increased exports, said farmers and cold storage operators.
Farmers are selling the biggest vegetable crop at Tk 15-17.5 per kilogram, higher than Tk 11.25-15 a year ago, as many farmers who grew other vegetables are incurring losses owing to the supply chain disruption between producing regions and cities resulting from the ongoing shutdown.
However, the lockdown aimed at battling the coronavirus pandemic did not hurt northwestern district Joypurhat’s potato grower Muzharul Islam and tens of thousands of others.
They completed harvesting before the shutdown was enforced on March 8 and stored a part of the tuber traditionally in their home yards and the rest in cold storage to release the crop slowly into the market before the next crop arrives by the end of the year.
“This has been a very good year for us. We have got attractive prices,” said Islam over the phone on May 5.
He planted potato on more than three acres of land and bagged more than 80 maunds of the tuber on each bigha.
He sold the vegetable at Tk 10-Tk 10.25 a kg in March, the first month after the harvest.
The prices were 38 per cent higher than the production cost of Tk 7.4 per kg estimated by the Department of Agricultural Marketing (DAM) in a study in February 2017.
Some 275km southeast from Joypurhat, farmers in the main potato-producing district Munshiganj, are also content for the higher prices.
Mohammad Monir Hawlader is one of them. The farmer at Tongibari in the district sold potato at Tk 650-Tk 700 per maund at farm gates. One maund equals 37.32 kg.
Farmers in the northern districts planted potato on less area, he said.
Originally a foreign crop, the potato was assumed to be brought by Portuguese navigators in the 17th century to the subcontinent and initially, it was cultivated in areas around Calcutta, according to Banglapedia.
Its cultivation expanded gradually in Bangladesh and acreage crossed two lakh hectares in 1999 and three lakh hectares in the next six years, thanks to growing popularity of the vegetable, according to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization.
Today, Bangladesh is the six largest producer of the tuber. In fiscal 2018-19, 96.55 lakh tonnes were grown, which is nearly double the production from a decade earlier, showed Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.
Farmers grew potato on 4.64 lakh hectares in the current fiscal year, down 1 per cent from the previous years, the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) said.
The total yield would fall to nearly 90 lakh tonnes this year because of the reduced acreage, said Mosharraf Hossain, president of the Bangladesh Cold Storage Association (BCSA).
“Demand for potato has increased as it is given along with rice as food relief to the poor and vulnerable people. Prices also went up in March amid stockpiling by consumers after coronavirus cases were first reported in the country,” he said, adding that prices rose to Tk 21 a kg at farmers’ end at that time.
Potato was sold at Tk 22-Tk 25 per kg in the retail markets in Dhaka city yesterday, up 31 per cent from a year ago, data from the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh showed.
The root vegetable stored by farmers following the traditional methods are now being sold in the market and cold storages would begin releasing the tuber after May. By that time, prices may increase by Tk 4-Tk 5 a kg, Hossain said.
Cold storages could manage to store 60 per cent of their combined capacity of 55 lakh tonnes until early this week and couldn’t use the full facility because of a lack of availability of workers owing to the shutdown, he added.
Cold storages stored potato up to 95 per cent of their total capacities last year.
Potato exports stood 42,000 tonnes until April, exceeding last year’s total shipment of 35,000 tonnes, said Md Azahar Ali, director of the plant quarantine wing of the DAE.
Including export and industrial processing, Bangladesh’s demand for the tuber was estimated at 72-77 lakh tonnes by the DAM in its study.
Yields would increase if they get quality seeds, said Islam, the grower in Joypurhat.
Anisur Rahman