Potato over-supplies give food rethought

Tag: sweet potato

Trust everyone in Gujarat to have an entrepreneurial spirit. It's the only spirit that runs in the blood of people in this dry state. About 50 farmers from different districts in the state have pooled in Rs 1 lakh each to launch their own company to export commodities like potatoes, groundnut, cotton, mangoes etc.

KP Agri International Pvt Ltd aims to export agri-commodities to foreign countries and is getting a lot of support from the Gujarati Diaspora settled abroad in the Gulf and Africa.

The group of farmers has already visited Dubai last month to tie up deals. "We have lined up agencies which will accept our products and we are now in talks with ports in Mundra, Kandla, Pipavav and others to select an export hub," says company's director, Maganbhai Patel of Modasa, who expects a massive Rs 50-crore turnover in the first year itself.

If everything goes well, the first containers of potatoes will be heading for Dubai in the next 20 days. In fact, the over-supplies caused by a bumper potato crop in north Gujarat, which forced many farmers to just destroy the produce, germinated the idea of farmers setting up their own export house.

"Exports will always fetch better prices. We still have hundreds of tonnes of potatoes lying in cold storages," says another share-holder, BK Patel, a farmer in Sabarkantha.