Bangladesh potato farmers struggling with rock-bottom prices
The production cost for a kilogram of potato is Tk 10, according to Md Jahangir Hossain, director of Tuber Crops Research Centre under the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute.
Growers stand to have margins if they get Tk 15 for each kg of potato. “This is a total loss for farmers,” Hossain said.
The weakened potato price has been blamed on the simultaneous harvesting in major regions that oversupplied the market. “When farmers have started harvesting potato, winter vegetables also started arriving in the market. It gave buyers more options,” he added.
In Thakurgaon, a bordering district in the northwest, growers got Tk 4-8 for selling one kg of early harvested potato compared to 13-15 a month ago while over in Dhaka, the retail prices of potato stood at Tk 12-20 per kg, down 51 percent from a month ago. The vegetable traded at Tk 25-35 a kg a year ago, according to Trading Corporation of Bangladesh.
Encouraged by the higher prices during the off-season particularly in November, farmers have planted potatoes on increased acreage this season, according to officials of the Department of Agricultural Extension.
Potato acreage rose 9.68 percent to 5.21 lakh hectares this season, according to DAE and the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics. Farmers grew 94.74 lakh tonnes of potato last season, up 2.38 percent from a year earlier.
source: thedailystar.net
