By Our Correspondents
Urlabari, June 5: Milk farmers in Morgan have suffered a loss as they have been unable to sell milk after the local administration imposed a prohibitory order to control COVID-19.
The farmers are facing financial crisis after the cooperatives and private milk traders stopped purchasing milk from them while the prices of food grains have skyrocketed.
Narayan Koirala of Kanepokhari-3, Rajgunj, who was selling 65 litres of milk a day before the lockdown, is now worried not about the livelihood of his family but also about saving his milking animals—two buffaloes and four cows.
Koirala said that he was unable to sell milk even he was ready to sell it at the rate of Rs. 20 per litre.
“I cannot manage to keep such a huge amount of milk in my house. I have no utensil to hold it,” he said.
Rudra Prasad Bhandari of Rajgunj, who produces 45 litres of milk a day, has a similar tale to tell.
“Milk can be managed by feeding it to the claves, but we cannot save cows unless we sell milk and buy feed for them,” he said.
Farmers of Kanepokhari-3 have been producing 1,800 litres of milk a day.
Before the imposition of the prohibitory order, they used to sell it to the local Singh Devi Milk Producers' Cooperative. However, the cooperatives stopped buying milk after the dairy industry to which it was supplying the milk also stopped buying it, they said, adding that the cooperatives do not have any equipment to process the milk.
Nabaraj Subedi of the same village, who has been selling 40 litres of milk a day, is now selling the milk at the rate ranging from Rs. 20 to 40 per litre by taking it to different villages .
He said that a large investment of farmers was at risk as the cooperatives were dependent on others to sell the milk collected from the farmers.
The government has provided loans to the farmers to buy cows and buffaloes through the secretariat of the Youth Self-Employment Fund through local cooperatives.
The farmers producing milk commercially lack reliable milk market, as a result, they bear huge economic loss during crisis.
Durga Kumari Bhandari, a local milk producer, said that she was unable to sell milk for days.
She demanded that the milk processing equipment should be provided to the village cooperatives so that the milk they produced did not go waste.
Meanwhile, in Taplejung, the farmers are greatly worried after failing to sell vegetables because of fear of COVID-19 and the restriction order imposed to control it.
Farmers involved in vegetable production are worried as the vegetables they have grown started rotting in the field in lack of market after the spread of the second wave of COVID-19.
The prohibitory order imposed by the District Administration Office a month ago is still in place, and all markets in the district have remained shut for a month.
The farmers said that some vegetables have started rotting in their fields as they were unable to take them to the market amid prohibitory order.
Dil Kumar Limbu of Phungling Municipality-4 said that tomatoes were rotting in his farm in lack of market. According to Limbu, the market was closed when his tomatoes had ripened.
Rasik Rai, a farmer of Phungling Municipality-7, also said that he was facing loss as he was unable to find market for the vegetables produced in his farm.
"Vegetables like tomatoes and mushrooms will rot if they are not sold or consumed in time," said Rai.
He said that the vegetable farmers were in loss as there was no one to buy their vegetables and there was no place to supply them.
Of late, many farmers living near Phungling Bazaar, the district headquarters, have been investing in vegetable farming.
The farmers said, “If the lockdown continuous for more weeks, the farmers who have invested in vegetable farming will face huge losses.”