The market intervention announced by the State government with regard to the purchase of cotton in Kurnool, Anantapur, and Kadapa districts has helped stabilise prices in the open market and dissuade the growers from taking their produce to Ballari.
The prices saw a low of below ₹4,000 a quintal last year in the absence of government market intervention and several farmers finding it difficult to dispose of their produce even eight months after the season.
In Anantapur district, the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) purchase centres were opened this year after a gap of five years, and during the past 20 days since the opening of the centres at Gooty and Tadipatri, the corporation was able to buy 8,000 quintals valued at ₹4.40 crore. However, this quantum is minuscule compared to the total expected production of 10.45 lakh quintals from 11,6139 acres sown.
From December 2, Tadipatri and Gooty CCI purchase centres have been buying quality cotton at ₹5,825 per quintal for 29 mm staple length and 8% moisture content. But, against the State government’s wish to take services to the farmer’s doorstep, here the cotton farmer is required to register his crop at the Village Secretariat through e-Crop booking. From there, he has to bring a sample to the nearest CCI purchase centre, where the quality is checked and verified online if he is a genuine registered farmer.
The farmer then needs to transport his produce, and the limit of quantity accepted is nine quintals per acre of the sown area registered in the e-Crop booking. A cotton farmer in Midthur village, Mallikarjuna, has sown crop in four acres, but does not take his produce to the CCI purchase centre as he gets ₹5,150 to ₹5,200 per quintal on his farm, which saves him a lot of effort, expenditure and time.
“I do not have to wait for the payment here, but at the CCI centre, there is a delay of at least 15 days in getting the payment. We also need to invest on transport, loading and unloading charges,” Mallikarjuna tells The Hindu.
CCI Assistant Commercial Purchase Executive D. Sarath Babu said that they had cleared payments till December 16 and were scheduling 10 farmers a day for bringing their produce. But for the past two days, the purchases were stalled and many farmers had to wait for three days at the Gooty Marketyard till Tuesday evening and there were 10 more tractors waiting with the bags of cotton.
In Kurnool, purchase centres have been opened at Adoni, Yemmiganur, and Nandyal since November 9, and last week, a new centre was opened at Proddutur in Kadapa district. But the quantum of produce coming to Tadipatri and Proddutur was very low at just a few hundreds of quintals per day.
