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Warehouse/Cold Storage

India has become self-sufficient in food grains and achieved a remarkable growth in the production of pulses, oil seeds and fibres to meet the requirements of the country. Although our farming community toiled hard, the small and marginal segment of farmers could not get real benefit of the growth in the economy due to either non availability of adequate storage infrastructure within the vicinity of production areas poor access to the godowns. This situation has forced them to dispose the produce at farm gate at a price determined by the middlemen/merchants/commission agents. Only a handful of influential farmers, who have the infrastructure to overcome the market fluctuations, could derive the benefits. Further, as the small and marginal farmers, who generally remain outside the purview of formal financing institutions depends heavily on the borrowed money from money lenders for the agricultural operations. Not only the borrowings are at an unreasonably high rate of interest but they are forced to sell their produce immediately after the harvest at very low rate. Thus, the farmers lose heavily on their investments. This vicious cycle is recurring year after year making the farmers poorer. The creation of small storage facilities, through construction of grain godowns, having a capacity ranging from 50 MT to 250 MT in villages may be a remedy for the farmers, who not only can store their own produce, but also provide storage space for rentals. To such farmers who store their produce for rents should have access to pledge loan against warehouse receipts from financial institutions.