Agriculture Markets & Democracy — A short tale from Telangana

It was November 6th, 2019, morning 9 AM and the crowds were swelling outside the Adilabad APMC market yard as you can see in the picture. In this photo you can find the district collector in the center surrounded by district officials, politicians, traders and farmers, as it was the opening day of the Adilabad market the farmers had high expectations that year to get a good price. I was participating on behalf of farmers as KisanMitra team. Adilabad cotton which the farmers and traders both claim to be the best quality cotton in the country because of the soil there, traded at the highest rate. Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) was ready to procure at the MSP of Rs. 5550 for the ideal moisture of cotton which is 8%. More than 12% they wouldn’t procure and the farmers had to sell to the traders. The farmers came with their initial picking which had higher moisture content because of the moisture in the air from the recent rains, and with CCI not procuring higher moisture cotton they would be at mercy of the traders who needed to fix a price for them. For the past two days there were discussions held by the district administration with the Ginning Mill owners who controlled the nexus of commission agents and eventually the whole market. The discussions were on two things — What should be the optimal rate offered by the traders so the farmers don’t end up in losses? and How would they measure the quality of cotton and determine the final price?

The talks which happened for two days didn’t yield any results. The Ginning mill owners had hundred reasons from Lorry transport issues , Overseas prices, Seed rate being low to local prices and were very adamant and were trying to price around ₹4800 per quintal. Farmers getting a minimum price was none of their agenda. We knew this was going to be disastrous for the farmer. When questioned about the basis on which the traders were finalizing the prices they didn’t have any justification and were just trying to bargain a price in their favor.

Finally coming back to the big day, the opening day of the market, where there was supposed to be an open auction for the Cotton by all traders, as the atmosphere outside continued to swell up, the talks between political leaders, farmers representatives, District Administration continued for more than 3 hours and the crowd was getting increasingly restless with every minute passing by.

Meanwhile, we gathered the rates from other market yards and discovered that in Warangal, the price was Rs.4905 and elsewhere in other markets it was close to the ₹5000 mark on that day. We leveraged this information to pressurize the traders to offer a higher price in Adilabad. The Ginning Mill owners were in a lobbying frenzy to have an upper hand in the negotiations but the district administration stuck to their guns and didn’t yield. The Ginning mill owners were forced to settle at ₹5000 at 8% moisture. Without the collective effort of civil society, politicians and dist administration the Ginning mill owners would have had their way in pegging the price at ₹200 less.

These efforts were substantiated further by

1. A strict vigilance from the agricultural officers and other IKP staff who ensured no wrong doing wrt quality measurement, an important factor in determining the price, occurred at the private Ginning mills. Private buyers are known to be notorious for cheating on weighing, in an APMC system the weighing bridges are calibrated and checked by govt officials.
2. Farmers in bullock carts are not made to wait and separate counters for them were arranged along with grain and resting space for the bulls.
3. Payment delays were followed up at District and state level
4. Traders reselling by purchasing at lesser price and selling at higher MSP was attempted to be curtailed down and many more

Yes MSP is abused and yes traders procure from farmers at lesser price and resell at higher price. But that only implies we need better systems that are transparent and accountable and also systems that enable all the cultivators including tenant farmers to sell at market yards and not just farmers who are land owners. We need to demand better systems not turn our backs to the corrupt systems. What happened that day in the APMC market yard was democracy 101 — the civil society, the district administration, the politicians all coming together to fight for the right of the farmers to have an assured price. If this power was taken away from the state govt a.k.a local administration had, it would have been a cake walk for the Corporates.

I fear that with these #farmbills, we are taking away our power as a civil society to intervene and that of the government to hold the corporates (in the above case the Ginning mill owners) accountable and slowly giving them a free hand to rein over our villages.

#AntiFarmerBills