Farmers not lifting potatoes, cold stores owners dump crop

JALANDHAR : As farmers are not coming forward to take away their potato crop kept at cold stores, their owners have started dumping the stocks on the roadsides and fields for stray cattle across the state.

Satbir Singh, horticulture’s deputy director, said that as farmers did not get a good price for potatoes last season, nearly 30% cold stores are filled with old stocks. The new crop will come in January-end. Against a cold storage capacity of 20 lakh metric tonnes in 572 stores in the state, the production in 2016-17 was 25.19 lakh metric tonnes. The stored potato stocks have turned unfit for consumption and it is putting extra burden on cold store owners as it costs ₹3 per kg for storage.

After paying the advance money, farmers now have not turned up to take their crop due to low demand in the market.Besides, farmers have to pay the transportation cost to take potatoes for sale after paying the rent of the store. They know that they will get much from the produce and even the cost will not be covered. Tashpur Cold Store owner Pavitar Singh said that he has shut down the electricity supply to the store on December 5 though the potato crop is still stored. Earlier, they used to shut down electricity supply in October.

“Cold store owners ar left with no option as the crop turns unfit for consumption and storing it increases our losses. There are still 6,000 bags of potato stored in my store, though I dumped thousands of bags this month,” Singh said.