Farmers in grief

Gajapati,Dec 22: Millet farmers in Gajapati district are facing difficulties as uncertainty with no mandis in the area to sell their produce. To come over this situation millet farmers are now on the verge of selling their produce to local traders at much lower prices.

Natural calamities of recent years, cyclone Titli  and Pethei spoiled farming produces and forced them to shift  from maize cultivation to millet farming in the past few years

This year, millet farming was done in around 3000 hectare land in Gajapati district. Due to the callousness of the administration in opening mandis in the area, farmers are being forced to sell their products to traders and middlemen at lower rates.

Millet farmer of Gajapati, Naresh Rayit said, “I was doing maize farming but due to flood and other natural calamities, I had to suffer huge losses. Later, I shifted to millet cultivation but as there is no proper mandi to sell our products, we are being forced to sell our produce in distress.”

“The Government has decided to procure millets at Rs 2,028 per quintal from the farmers through LAMPS and Millet Mission. This is a good step by the government to prevent farmers from going for distressed sale,” said Managing Director (MD) of LAMPS in R.Udayagiri, Mimansha Kumar Satpathy.

“Two procurement centres from LAMPS have been opened at Udayagiri and Ramagiri and we hope to procure 1500-2000 quintal millet from the 800 registered farmers of R Udayagiri block,” informed district co-ordinator of Millet Mission, Raghunath Sahoo.

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