news desk: Potato farmers and traders in Dinajpur and its neighbouring districts, including Thakurgaon and Panchagarh, are suffering serious losses for the second year in a row due to poor market prices for the tuber crop. Here, a worker at Railbazarhat in Dinajpur town is seen packing potatoes into a sack after they remained unsold. PHOTO: KONGKON KARMAKER
\nMd Shafiqul Islam, a potato trader in Dinajpur, kept around 2,000 bags of potatoes in cold storage this year in hopes of recovering his losses from the previous season.<\/p>\n
However, he now finds himself deeper in the hole as current market prices for the spud have dipped below the previous levels.<\/p>\n
So, he has registered losses of Tk 7 lakh so far this season while it was Tk 4 lakh in 2021.<\/p>\n
As prices have been low for the past two years, wholesalers are having to sell the tuber at Tk 17-18 per kilogramme (kg), according to Shafiqul and traders like him in the Railbazarhat area in Dinajpur town.<\/p>\n
Shafiqul collected Astrid potatoes from farmers in Dinajpur and its neighbouring districts for Tk 16 per kg between April and May this year.<\/p>\n
He stored 2,000 bags of the crop at a local cold storage that charged him Tk 270 for each 50kg bag.<\/p>\n
Considering all other expenses, such as transport and labour costs, Shafiqul would need to sell the potatoes for Tk 21 per kg in order to break even.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
news desk: Potato farmers and traders in Dinajpur and its neighbouring districts, including Thakurgaon and Panchagarh, are suffering serious losses for the second year in a row due to poor market prices for the tuber crop. Here, a worker at Railbazarhat in Dinajpur town is seen packing potatoes into a sack after they remained unsold. PHOTO: KONGKON KARMAKER Md Shafiqul Islam, a potato trader in Dinajpur, kept around 2,000 bags of potatoes in cold storage this year in hopes of recovering his losses from the previous season. However, he now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29646,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[30,39],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29645"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29647,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29645\/revisions\/29647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}