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Ganjam

Cash crop cotton loses lustre for Ganjam farmers

January 6, 2021 By Gurvinder Singh Leave a Comment

Antarjan Mallick grows cotton and other crops in one acre of his land in Rajanapalli village at Sankhemundi administrative block in Ganjam district of Odisha, around 200 km from Bhubaneswar, the state capital.

The 45-year-old farmer said that cotton fetches him more price than other crops like maize and oilseeds.

Yet he has been losing interest in growing the fiber crop that is often being referred as white gold because of its huge demand and high remuneration.

Mallick is not alone. Many cotton farmers like him are shifting to other crops.

Ganjam district has been steadily witnessing a droton fetches higher price but absence of marketing and transportation facilities coupled with increasing pressure from money lenders has been forcing small and marginal farmers like us to shift to other crops even though it is not profitable,” Mallick said while showing the white cotton in his field.

Arun Mishra, the secretary of Regulated Market Committee (RMC) at Dighapahandi said that cotton production area in the district has dropped to 854 hectares from 2,000 hectares five years ago.

The production has also witnessed a sharp fall and even 5,000 quintal target is hard to achieve, whereas the production was 12,000 quintal five years ago.

Lack of ginning mill

Farmers pointed out that the absence of a ginning mill was a deterrent.

It is where the cotton fiber is separated from the seed and dust particles. The ginned cotton, referred to as lint, is then processed into bales.

“In other districts, the ginning mills are located at the procurement point and it helps farmers to sell their produce at one point,” said Bibhisha Dolai (70), a farmer from Brahmanapanka village in Patrapur administrative block. “But in Ganjam there is no ginning mill at the procurement point in Dighapahandi.”

“We have to travel around 80 km to a ginning mill located in Gunpur area of Rayagada district,” Dolai told VillageSquare.in.

“It increases the transportation cost substantially leading to severe loss.” Farmers said that Ganjam district also had a ginning mill in Aska town, but has been lying non-operational for the past five years.

They alleged that the government has not shown any interest to revive it.

Suitable agro-climate

In Ganjam district, cotton is generally grown in five administrative blocks, namely, Patrapur, Sanakhemundi, Sorada, Digapahandi and Sheragad.

The sowing of cotton seeds in Ganjam starts from 15 June and lasts till 7 July.

“The harvesting usually begins from the first week of November and continues till the end of December.

The plucking can be done four times during this period,” Prasanna Kumar Swain, a Behrampur-based subject matter specialist on cotton, told VillageSquare.in.

Cotton is classified into short, medium and long staple depending upon its staple length.

“At present around 700 farmers are growing cotton in the district, whereas there were more than a thousand farmers a few years ago,” he said.

“Farmers depend hugely on cotton because it’s a rain-fed crop and the district lacks adequate irrigational facilities for other crops.

It requires moisture for a short period but water logging for a longer period can destroy the crop,” said Swain.

Minimum support price

The government has fixed a minimum support price (MSP) of Rs 5,825 per quintal for procuring cotton that started from 16 December last year.

But farmers said that the price is not enough because of the higher transportation cost.

“We hardly make any profit because Rs 5,000-odd is spent in growing one quintal of cotton.

The cost involved in shifting it to the ginning mill leaves us with no returns,” Raghav Dolai (36), a farmer from Brahmanapanka village told VillageSquare.in. “Government should bear the transportation cost.”

As per the norms of Cotton Corporation of India (CCI), cotton is procured at ginning mill, excluding the cost of its transportation.

“As per the policy, the CCI has never borne the transportation expense of cotton and it is procured at the mill point.

There has been no change in the rules for Ganjam so far,” S. Sudhakar, senior commercial officer at CCI, Dighapahandi, told VillageSquare.in.

Private financing

Apart from transportation issues, the exploitation of money lenders – locally called sahukar – is also cited as the reason for farmers losing interest in cotton cultivation.

“We depend heavily on private money lenders, as we do not have the required finance for farming,” said Sukesh Das, a farmer of Rajanapalli village.

“They provide us with raw material and other farming inputs and also buy the seed cotton from us but the prices are decided only after the yield.

The money lenders often pay less saying that the cotton is of inferior quality and giving other vague reasons,” Das told VillageSquare.in. “It results in heavy losses to farmers.”

“We still strike a losing deal with money lenders as it saves us from the hassle of travelling far off to the ginning mill and incur transportation expenses,” he said. “The money lenders buy the cotton directly from the fields that is convenient for us.

But losses after losses have been leaving us with no alternative but to move away from cotton.”

A section of farmers pointed out that they are also moving to maize and other crops due to lesser harvesting time.

“Maize takes just 80-95 days to harvest,” said Mallick. “We do not make much profit in maize also but lesser harvesting times enables us to grow more crops.”

Land on lease

The situation has reached such an extent that farmers are forced to lease out their lands to farmers of neighboring Andhra Pradesh.

“At least, we receive some monetary benefits by leasing our land as the absence of government support has made it difficult for us to grow cotton,” said Suresh Kumar Jena of Sunantara village in Seragada block.

“Farmers from the neighboring state arrive here prior to monsoon and give us some money for leasing the land and take the produce back to their state for sales.

We could have earned more money than leasing our lands but the situation prevents us to do farming,” Jena told VillageSquare.in.

“It is not just transportation and private lenders but farmers fail to meet the desired quality because of inadequate training,” said Rabindranath Dakua, a senior journalist who has been covering the plight of cotton farmers for many years.

“Cotton is pesticide intensive crop and is grown in monoculture but farmers here do integrated farming and grow other crops that risk them getting affected with chemicals.”

“The construction of the ginning mill has already been initiated inside the procurement center at Dighapahandi and is expected to be completed by early next year.

The administration is serious about the issues and all steps are being taken to solve the problems faced by the farmers,” Arun Mishra, secretary of RMC assured VillageSquare.in.

This article was first appeared in  VillageSquare.in.

Filed Under: English Tagged With: Ganjam, Odisha

OSRTC suspends buses in view of Maoist operations

December 2, 2020 By Hrusikesh Mohanty Leave a Comment

Berhampur, Dec 2 (LocalWire): Road communication in the Maoist-infested areas of southern Odisha districts was partially affected as the state-owned Odisha state road transport corporation (OSRTC) has suspended its buses in 14 different routes and diverted the route of five buses from Wednesday.

The OSRTC held up its buses as the CPI (Maoist) began to observe the week-long People’s Liberal Guerilla Army (PLGA).

Private buses are operating normally.

Meanwhile, security has tightened in Kandhamal district with stepping up of the anti-Maoist operations.

“We have alerted the forces. The combing operation was intensified in vulnerable areas of the district, while vehicle checking is being done at strategic locations,” said SP (Kandhamal) Vineet Agrawal.

He, however, said that no extra forces had been deployed in view of the PLGA week.

The outlawed outfit generally concentrates on new recruitment during the observance of the PLGA every year.

They also pay homage to the Maoist cadres who have died during encounters with security forces.

LocalWire

Filed Under: English Tagged With: Ganjam, Odisha

Light rainfall over few districts due to Nivar

November 25, 2020 By Sneha Santuka Leave a Comment

Bhubaneswar, Nov 25 (LocalWire): Light to moderate rain and thundershowers has been predicted for Nov 25 owing to cyclonic storm Nivar.

LocalWire

Filed Under: English Tagged With: Gajapati, Ganjam, Kalahandi, Khordha, Koraput, Malkangiri, Nabarangpur, Nayagarh, Odisha, puri, Rayagada

Thundershowers likely

November 21, 2020 By Sneha Santuka Leave a Comment

Light to moderate rainfall and thunderstorms are likely to occur at one to two places between 2 pm and 5 pm today.

LocalWire

Filed Under: English Tagged With: Cuttack, Ganjam, Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapara, Nayagarh

New LL applications to begin from Nov 20

November 20, 2020 By Sneha Santuka Leave a Comment

The Regional Transport Office here has been directed to begin new LL applications from 20.11.2020 following COVID guidelines.

The decision was taken after the demand for slots came down in the RTO.

LocalWire

Filed Under: English Tagged With: Anugul, Bhubaneswar, Boudh, Deogarh, Gajapati, Ganjam, Kalahandi, Keonjhar, Koraput, Malkanagiri, Mayurbhanj, Nabarangpur, Nayagarh, Nuapada, Rayagada, Sambalpur, Sonepur, Sundargarh

5 schools selected for development as centre of excellence

November 18, 2020 By Hrusikesh Mohanty Leave a Comment

Berhampur, Nov 18 (LocalWire): As many as five government-run schools of three towns in Ganjam district have been selected for developing as centre of excellence (CoE).

The schools include Brundaban government high school and NAC High School, Hinjili, VV Giri Girls’ CT training school, City High School, Berhampur and Onslow Institute, Chhatrapur.

Odisha School Education Programme Authority (OSEPA) in a letter to the district collector recently asked to ensure the basic infrastructure facilities in these schools from the District Mineral Fund (DMF).

The infrastructure facilities include at least one classroom for 40 to 50 students, adequate toilets for boys and girls, drinking water, electricity, computer laboratory, benches and desks for students of Class III onwards and Dari and bench for Class 1 and 11 students, girls’ common room, separate room for staff and headmaster, dedicated library room and laboratory.

“We will prepare the estimation for development of the infrastructure facilities of the schools to be made CoE after assessing their present infrastructures,” said district education officer (DEO) Ganjam Amulya Kumar Pradhan.

The government has decided to develop 101 schools in the state as CoE. Earlier, the government had announced each of these schools will get financial assistance of Rs. 2 lakhs for developing soft-skills infrastructures in the schools.

The CoE schools will have special infrastructure for soft skill training for the students, where Spoken English would be introduced from Class 1.

Some other facilities like Aadhar seeding of all the students would be ensured, while teacher position would be made as per the requirement of the school, sources said.

Main objective of the development of the CoE of the schools was to ensure quality education and to attract the students towards the government-run schools.

LocalWire

Filed Under: English Tagged With: Berhampur, Ganjam, Odisha

Ganjam admin sanctions COVID assistance for migrant returnees

October 31, 2020 By Hrusikesh Mohanty Leave a Comment

Berhampur, Oct 30 (LocalWire): In a bid to provide livelihood support to the families of migrant returnees, Ganjam district administration has sanctioned 1405 proposals with an amount of around Rs. 5.17-crore under the Covid-19 Assistance Package (CAP) of the state government.

The state government had announced the CAP in the month of August with an aim to restore rural livelihood, rural enterprises and rehabilitation of skilled and unskilled migrant workers, in convergence of different livelihood programmes, including Odisha Livelihood Mission (OLM) amid the outbreak of the Covid-19 in the state.

The CAP was designed by the Panchayati Raj Department.

Around 5 lakh migrant workers had returned to their native places in Ganjam, one of the migrant-prone districts in the state from different states following the shutdown of their firms in different states.

While several of the migrant workers have already left for their workplaces once again following the relaxation of the lockdown, several others are staying back in their native villages and trying to eke out their livelihood here.

“The amount has been sanctioned to the women self help groups (WSHGs), basically targeting the members of the families belonging to the migrant workers,” said project director, District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) Sindhe Datatreya Bhaosheb.

Each of the individual members or groups will avail a loan of up to Rs. one lakh with a six-month moratorium period to repay.

Under the loan, they would undertake different household projects like preparation of pickles, badi, sewing of the clothes and masks, food processing etc.

LocalWire

Filed Under: English Tagged With: Berhampur, Ganjam, Odisha

Activists campaign against firecracker use ahead of Diwali

October 30, 2020 By Hrusikesh Mohanty Leave a Comment

Berhampur, Oct 30 (LocalWire): Ahead of Diwali, several activists, academicians, retired teachers against the bursting of the firecrackers on the occasion of the festival of lights, on Thursday.

Members of the Forum for Ganjam (FFG) also raised awareness among people to avoid the use of polythene, wear masks and maintain social distancing norms.

“Bursting crackers will increase the levels of air pollution in the city, and this will further aggravate the COVID-19 health issues of the people,” said Sudhir Rout, the convener of the forum.

LocalWire

Filed Under: English Tagged With: Berhampur, Ganjam, Odisha

Ganjam police bust 22 gambling dens, 2 in Berhampur

October 28, 2020 By Hrusikesh Mohanty Leave a Comment

Berhampur, Oct 28 (LocalWire): Continuing the crackdown on gambling during the festival season, Ganjam police have busted as many as 22 gambling dens in various places in the district in the last two days.

As many as 160 gamblers have been arrested and cash worth Rs 3.64 lakhs has been seized during the period, police said.

Eight mobile phone sets have also been seized from the dens, they said. These include two gambling dens in Berhampur city, police said.

LocalWire

Filed Under: English Tagged With: Berhampur, Ganjam, Odisha

Number of farmers registered for paddy procurement increases by 5000

October 28, 2020 By Hrusikesh Mohanty Leave a Comment

Berhampur, Oct 28 (LocalWire): Over 5000 more farmers in Ganjam have been registered for the paddy procurement process this year.

The process is likely to begin from the first week of December.

While 1,34,462 farmers had registered their names last year, the number has increased to 1,39,648 this year, official sources said.

The date of the paddy procurement will be decided at the district level procurement committee (DLPC), which is likely to be held in the first week of next month, said chief civil supply officer (CCSO) Uma Shankar Pati.

CCSO said that it is not mandatory for all the registered farmers to sell their paddy in the government-run mandis.

LocalWire

Filed Under: English Tagged With: Berhampur, Ganjam, Odisha

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