Soybean farmers in Madhya Pradesh are facing a dearth of quality seeds in the current Kharif season and this may reduce the yield of a cash crop locally known as ‘peela sona’ or yellow gold, the functionary of a farmers’ outfit said on Tuesday.
Kisan Sena secretary Jagdish Ravliya said that private players were taking advantage of the situation and were selling soybean seeds at anything from Rs 9,000 to Rs 12,000 per quintal, which is double of the rates from last year.
Many cooperative societies do not have soybean seeds, which was causing immense trouble to those cultivating the crop, he added.
Meanwhile, Madhya Pradesh agriculture minister Kamal Patel advised farmers to look at other crops as soybean was turning out to be a loss-making move.
Patel said heavy rains and insect attacks had caused heavy losses to soybean farmers over the last three seasons.
“The state government is trying to sort out this problem (shortage of seeds). But the need of the hour is that farmers give priority to sowing other crops during the Kharif season. There was a time when soybean had bettered the economic condition of farmers but now it is a loss-making move,” Patel said.
“In such a situation, we have advised farmers to sow paddy, maize, cotton, groundnut and lentils to raise their income during the current Kharif season. I am a farmer, and earlier we used to sow soybean on our 200-acre family land but now we cultivate it on just 10-20 acres,” the minister said.
The Union government has fixed MSP for soybean for the current Kharif season (2021-22) at Rs 3,950 per quintal, which is Rs 70 more than the previous season.
According to Soybean Processors Association of India (SOPA), soybean was sown on 58.54 lakh hectares in MP in the last Kharif season, or 50 per cent of the national acreage, which stood at around 118 lakh hectares.
Instead of discouraging the cultivation of soybean, the state government should initiate a new programme for producing quality seeds. It is essential to encourage soybean production in the country to remove malnutrition and attain self-sufficiency in the edible oils sector,” SOPA chairman Davish Jain said.