Aug 27, Kathmandu: Farmers are in trouble because the potatoes produced in Rukum East are not getting the market. The farmers of the Putha Uttarganga Rural Municipality of the district have said that the dug potatoes are piled up in the houses of every person, and even though more than half of the potatoes are left to be dug in the fields, they have not been able to sell even one kilo of potatoes.

At present, the farmers are suffering due to the lack of sale of potatoes grown in most of the villages such as Tak, Sera, Damchan, Ghumlibang, Mayang, Gar, Chargaon. Satmaya Budha, a member of the Chebang Farmers' Group, a resident of Ward-10, said that the potato, which is the second major crop after corn in this place, will rot if it does not find a market. There, after the group produced a lot of potatoes through the Chaklabandi program, they were in trouble because they could not send them to the market. Member Budha said that since potatoes are not sold in the market and there is no place to store them at home, they have to cover them with plastic.

He said that because it is rainy season, if the potatoes are kept covered with plastic in the garden, they may rot due to rain and the taste of the potatoes kept in the open in the garden will also deteriorate. "Nowadays, the work of digging potatoes is going on everywhere in Putha Uttarganga Rural Municipality," the member Budha said, "We have dug potatoes and stored them in the fields, even though there is no bridge over the river Uttarganga.

 We have not been able to bring the potatoes produced here to the market in Rukumkot, which is the district headquarters." Uttarganga Since there is no bridge on the river, the vehicles cannot cross and the vehicles cannot go far and they cannot cross the Uttarganga river carrying the potatoes, so they have to store the potatoes in their houses and gardens.

Similarly, Hriday Budha, secretary of sample farmer group of Damchan, Ward No. 11 of the rural municipality, complained that the potatoes produced in Damchan did not find market. He said that because the potatoes planted by the villagers could not be brought to the market, some of the potatoes started rotting. Secretary Budha said that the price of the produced potatoes was not what they said. Now the price of potatoes in the market is Rs 100 per kg and they also said that when they try to sell potatoes from home for Rs 100, they do not even have to pay for the transportation cost.

Dhan Bahadur Oli, a farmer of Bhume Rural Municipality-9, also complained that the potatoes produced by him did not find a market. He said that when all the potatoes produced by him and other people in the village were stored at home, the potatoes began to rot. Oli, the farmer, said that the potatoes started rotting and the farmers were disappointed as they did not see any improvement in the market management.

Similarly, the potatoes produced in Ward No. 7 of the rural municipality where the potato block program has been conducted have also been stored at home. Farmers have been telling us that their production has been wasted in the past years because they could not bring it to the market, even though the production of rice that they tried during the seed shortage was good. They said that because there is no collection center anywhere in the district, the products could not be stored systematically.

Integrated Agriculture and Livestock Development Office  head  Pitambar Basnet said that although there are some problems in managing the potato market due to geographical location, the problem is that the farmers cannot determine the price. He said that because the farmers said that the price of the potatoes produced by them was higher than the market price, the potatoes could not reach the market there.