Lax wheat procurement drive!

The dilly dallying in the government programme to buy wheat from farmers in the district of Nilphamari is having ill effects. Farmers are being forced to sell their produce at a fraction of the cost of production, while middlemen are hoarding the supply to be sold later at a much inflated price. The food department, we are informed, has flouted a government directive to procure wheat from growers on April 28 at a cost of Tk 28 per kilo as wheat had been harvested by mid-April. It is now late May and nothing has been done, so who can blame farmers as they are fleeced by hoarders. The question here is that the timeline for harvesting wheat is not an unknown factor, so what is the reason for this delay in planning and executing the government procurement programme that happens every year?

The tolerance threshold for farmers is very low and they really have no fallback position when it comes to recuperating costs as soon as the crop is harvested. And what happens to the government's own plans to purchase 1,315 tonnes of wheat this year directly from farmers in six upazilas of the district? The explanation given by union agriculture office about the difficulty in verifying farmers list is, unfortunately a lame one because the preparatory work for this should have started months ago and not when it is time to harvest. One wonders if there is a possible connections between officials at field level and middlemen wholesalers who are busy stocking the precious crop, only to be offloaded when an artificial crisis of wheat emerges later on.