AP farmers to shift to traditional Bengal gram varieties

Andhra Bengal gram farmers may shift to growing traditional varieties this rabi due to huge inventory backlog and lack of demand for KAK2 and Mexican Bold export varieties.

"Demand for KAK2 and Mexican Bold table varieties had dwindled since last year owing to changing consumption patterns in the export markets such as Saudi Arabia. Added to this was the Centre's ban on pulses exports that proved detrimental to the interests of the farmers," Ponnam Prabhakar, chairman of the Andhra Pradesh State Cooperative Marketing Federation (APMarkfed), told Business Standard.

Stating that the KAK2 variety fetched a market price of Rs 3,400 per quintal while Mexican Bold was bought at a premium of Rs 4,000 per quintal last year, he said, farmers had piled up huge stocks of the previous rabi's produce, expecting the prices to grow abnormally.

"Around 6 lakh tonne of KAK2 and 1 lakh tonne of Mexican Bold are lying at the 16 cold storages in Ongole of Prakasam district and there is no ready demand to offload them," he said. However, 7 lakh tonne of traditional variety Bengal gram stocks, which too have been lying, is steadily moving into the domestic market on account of huge demand, he added.

The traditional varieties, Annegiri JG-II and Mosambi, currently fetch a market price of Rs 2,400-2,600 a quintal.

Prabhakar said farmers had urged the state government to purchase export varieties. "Chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy has recently directed APMarkfed to buy the export varieties at a market intervention price of Rs 2,350 and Rs 2,850 per quintal respectively to bail out the farmers," he said.

There is a minimum support price (MSP) of Rs 1,430 per quintal for only traditional varieties of Bengal gram, while there is no MSP for export varieties.

The procurement of export varieties at the designated market intervention price is only from small and marginal farmers, which has pushed large farmers with huge stocks in deep trouble. Owing to this, 90 per cent of the large farmers cultivating the export varieties had indicated they would shift to traditional varieties, Prabhakar said.

APMarkfed had started procurement of Bengal gram export varieties at the Ongole Agricultural Market Yard from July 2, 2007. Till date, it has procured 11,151 quintal of KAK2 at Rs 2,350 a quintal and 457 quintal of Mexican Bold at Rs 2,850 per quintal.

"There is a seed requirement of 20,000 quintal of KAK2 variety for the rabi season that starts this October. We have been sending the procured seed for processing and packing on a day-to-day basis. On the contrary, seed requirement for traditional varieties is at 1.6 lakh quintal," he added.