A senior state agriculture department official, seeking anonymity, said that the state government has not done anything to protect the farmers and the retailers from the clutches of the cold storage owners.

“We know that there is a huge gap between the farmers’ selling price and the retail price in the market. It is supposed to be controlled by the state agriculture marketing department. But the state government has done absolutely nothing. Just like before, the middlemen and cold storage owners are running the show,” he said.

Although the harsh climate and the delayed onset of the monsoon are responsible for the killer blight disease that badly affected the potato crop all over Bengal, agriculture experts reckon that the damage, particularly to farmers, could have been controlled had the state reined in cold storage owners.

“We tried to sensitise the farmers about the possibility of an imminent blight attack and asked them to go for the seed-purification process. There are several kinds of impurities in the potato seeds that we get from Punjab,” argues Sumit Ghosh, additional director of the state agriculture department.

He says: “The farmers who were looking to capture the market fast, made a mistake by not going for the process. They rather started farming with the impure seeds. Thereafter to prevent the blight attack, they sprayed pesticides, which in turn turned the crop toxic. It, in fact, resulted in quicker damage to the potato crop. We are now stressing more on sensitisation and educating the farmers to protect the crops from blight.”

... contd.