Potato farming: India makes a hash of it

The price of potatoes is once again moving up, largely due to the demand-supply gap in the market-place. The National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (Nafed) that was asked by the Ministry of Civil Supplies to explore the possibility of importing potatoes from Russia, China and Egypt, procured 3,500 tonnes of potatoes for Orissa in July. It is now is in the process of importing more potatoes, especially for the eastern States, after West Bengal’s Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee started restricting potato trucks bound for Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and Assam.

How did India, which has been a net exporter of potatoes to neighbouring countries such as Pakistan and Sri Lanka, turn into an importer with a shortage of potatoes?

Government estimates of supplies especially during the last two seasons are faulty, according to those in the trade. As agricultural commodities grow into modern supply-chain driven mass consumption products, the lack of authentic supply data can be crippling, leading to price volatility that hurts large bulk consumers as well as households. The problem could worsen with more food processing centres, proposed by the Government, because the capacity to process agricultural produce would improve without supplies being reliable.

National Horticulture Board (NHB) data says India produced 45 million tonnes of potatoes in 2012-13 — nearly 10 per cent more than what it produced last year. According to Prakash Lohia, a chemical engineer from IIT-Delhi who manages Vegit Foods, one of India’s largest farm-to-retail potato businesses, the key culprit could be the lack of authentic data.

“There is no scientific method of proving the authenticity of this data,” says Lohia who has invested in tissue culture of the crop, warehousing, food processing and retail. The current method of collecting data is through the horticulture department officers right down to the block level who estimate the crop yield in a very rudimentary and unscientific way and collate it manually. The data is obtained from different States; there is no common, certified, standardised procedure of data gathering.

Traders say production of potatoes has dropped in Uttar Pradesh by 10 per cent and in West Bengal by 20 per cent, which contradicts government data.

NHB data shows that Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have historically produced nearly two-thirds of India’s potato crop, and Bihar around 15 per cent. NHB reported increased potato crop in Uttar Pradesh over the past two years and a sharp drop in West Bengal during 2011-12, although that was partially reversed in 2012-13.

Surprisingly its data shows potato arrivals at Kolkata mandi from January to December 2013 at only 37,626 mt — just a tenth of the arrivals at Delhi and Mumbai and less than a fifth of the arrivals at Bangalore and Pune. How did the populous cities in the Gangetic belt manage during the later months? The absence of proper data, and hence the lack of preparedness, could lead to a major potato shortfall this year, affecting prices to the retail consumer and the B2B segment.

Apart from data there is a huge lack of know-how, technology and resource inputs in the area of potato culture which accounts for nearly 28 per cent of India’s vegetable crop. All over the world, potato is grown in multiple varieties in at least three categories: one for the consumer, one for industrial use and one for commercial use by snack producers. Only in India is the same variety used for all three purposes. And, it is not only the USDA that accurately measures its potato crop annually; developing countries such as Peru and Brazil which are major producers of the Canchan variety of the tuber, popular for French fries, have also perfected their data outputs for use-based production.

Apart from data management there are other areas where India must improve its solutions to ensure low prices for retail consumers and food processing.

India lacks the right appliances for mass farming (though India’s manufacturing sector is adequately advanced) probably because farm sizes are small. Tractor manufacturers are not investing enough in bringing to India the latest agricultural tools commonly used for automation in farming.

Our current agronomic practices are also pretty primitive and yield is low. Large-scale investment is needed in drip irrigation systems for farming, especially in tubular crops like potato which need less water to grow.

Without these improvements the country will have to depend on sporadic imports that often have fungal issues like black dot, brown rot and other defects that are not visible. So the cost to consumer and the nation’s import bill keeps rising.

The writer is a freelance journalist