Brinjal growers’ village reels under a host of issues

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KalingaTV News Network

brinjalSorada: It seems all efforts by the government to guarantee farmers in rural areas easy access to the market, cold storage facility as well as protection from unscrupulous traders have come a cropper. In the latest example, farmers in the Pipalpanka village under Sorada block of Ganjam district, a major brinjal producing village, were seen selling their produce at just Rs 5 per kg out of compulsion.

The gloomy picture of brinjal farming in Pipalpanka village –virtually bifurcated by NH 59 — which caters to the market needs of major cities in the state like the state capital Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Puri, Nayagarh and Berhampur, came to fore after KalingaTV made a visit to the village recently. Around 80 families inhabiting the village came up with shocking revelations regarding their income from brinjal cultivation and appealed to the government to address their concerns immediately.

Bhikari Nayak, a farmer from the village painted a very dismal picture of brinjal farming in the area. He said his family fails to earn a good income from brinjal farming despite toiling hard for almost 12 hours a day. This happens due to inaccessibility to the nearest market at Sorada, which is 14 kilometres away from the village. This being the situation, they are compelled to sell their produce to traders in the village at a rate much lower than the marketrate .

Expressing an almost similar view, Jaga Bbehera, another farmer of the village said while they sell their agricultural produce in the village to local traders at a relatively lower price, unavailability of a cold storage facility in the village just multiplies their difficulty. After making precious little out of agriculture, they also have to repay the agricultural loans taken from village money lenders at a very high rate of interest, he added.

The farmers in the village have appealed to the government to look into their issues immediately and set up at least a cold storage facility in the village for their benefit.

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