After the unprecedented collapse of the price of potatoes, farmers in the state are faced with low prices for their crop of sunflower seeds and maize.
At around 10 am on Friday, 58-year-old Devi Dayal Sharma sat on a chair, surrounded by several quintals of sunflower seeds, at the Shahabad mandi, around 20 km from Kurukshetra town in Haryana. Sharma is a sunflower cultivator from a Padlu village in Kurukshetra district. “The market price [of sunflower seeds] has further dropped from Rs 2,800 per quintal to Rs 2,400 per quintal in a week,” said Sharma, his voice filled with anxiety.
That day, in many parts of Haryana, as in Rajasthan, hundreds of farmers parked their tractors across national and state highways and blocked traffic. Like farmers elsewhere in the country, they were demanding loan waivers and a better price for their crops from the government.
Through their protest, Haryana’s farmers were not just showing solidarity with their counterparts in states like Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh who have been protesting since the beginning of June. After a disastrous market for their previous crop, potatoes – which several farmers in Haryana sold for less than Re 1 per kg in the mandis – the market prices of their current crop of sunflower seeds and maize has also dropped well below the cost of production.
June is the month when sunflower seeds – used in the production of edible oil – and maize arrive at northern Haryana’s markets. Both are popular crops grown in the Kurukshetra, Ambala, Yamunanagar and Panchkula districts in Haryana.
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