10:37 PM
Unknown
It had been about two years when
I rejoined Saptari in 5th December 2013. Saptari District is one of
the eastern Terai district of Nepal, which is food basket area of Nepal.
Nevertheless, persistent drought since last four year has resulted this
district as a food deficit district, in spite of its good soil and
accessibility of other production inputs.
Saptari district is always at center of attraction in Nepal, either in
case of administrative or political issues. Some sort of disfunctioning of administrative
works and low social development in last many years back , although repeatedly
leaders from the districts are at ministerial position since long back are
major considerable points in scenario of Saptari.
We were in crop assessment
mission, which is operating twice a year by ministry of agricultural
development in close collaboration with UN WFP and UN FAO. This time we had
also worked together with IRRI and CYMMIT. 5th December Morning at
10.30 AM when we reached at District Agriculture Development Office, the gate
of office was covered with bicycles and motorcycles of farmers. More than
thirty people were there, in front open space of the office. As we step up to Senior
Agriculture Development Officer (SADO) chamber, we could feel the numbers of
farmer's were increasing and their noise was louder than earlier.
With greetings and short
introduction with each other, we started our discussion on mission objectives.
Meanwhile a group of farmers entered the office room of SADO. A louder voice
was prominent there in Maithili Language, which I could understand partly of
it. The issue was with wheat seed.
However, my browsing to language power and analysis could not understand
the problem as clearly as I wanted. Then SADO tried his best to convince
them. I don't know how much they convinced,
however, as a result of that, they left the chamber.
After they gone, SADO was telling
us "National Seed Company had given the quota of 125 Mt wheat seed to
Saptari District, however, no seed has been delivered to Saptari yet. The mode
of distribution was through dealers of National Seed Company, for which 21 dealers
were chosen in district." Now, I was asking myself if seed has not come
yet, why farmers' are assembled there. Why so hue and cry at farmer's outside
DADO office. Obviously, there was reason. SADO was continuing that one dealer
was distributing 100 of Kg of seed to his nearby farmers, when DADO had given
quota limit of 20 Kg per farmer. This
was because NSC had quota of 125 Mt of Seed for Saptari district (which is
subsidized seed) whereas another 75 MT of unsubsidized seed was also given to
dealer. Therefore, in spite of bringing and selling subsidized seed, they bought
and sold the unsubsidized seed. Even the information about unsubsidized seed
was not provided to DADO office. The 35% of price was subsidized in wheat seed
resulting Rs 36.5 per Kg, whereas remaining 75 Mt had to be paid full price of
the seed.
Further Consultation with Staffs
at DADO office we had a very interesting but shocking fact came later on that
Indian farmers are very attracted to wheat seed of NSC, which is NL 257 variety.
This means that has resulted higher yield in India. Therefore they come to
Nepali dealer and pay more than Nepalese farmers can pay resulting shortage of
seed to Nepali farmers. Thus, the
blaming was also for those standing in front of DADO office. According to them,
they will take subsidized seed in their name and own family members and sell it
to Indian farmer's at higher rate. So that, they were like middle man intended
to earn from seed transaction rather than farming.
That was really shocking news to
us. I was asking myself "what the hell is going on? People are not having
seed to plant here in Nepal and all of us are standing with excitement to take
and deliver improved subsidized seed from government of Nepal to Indian
farmers. "This shows what track our agriculture taking for and how we are
going to revolutionize in our agriculture sector in Nepal.
Photo1 : Farmer writing their name with address to claim wheat seed from dealer in DADO Office Premises.
Photo 2 : Common Means of transportation- bicycle of farmer's in DADO Office open space, farmer's waiting seed
