COTTON PROCUREMENT STARTED IN RAYAGADA Rayagada is one of the very few districts in Orissa which has a good produce of cotton. Gunupur sub division of Rayagada is the major cotton growing area of this district. There have been lot of issues relating to cotton procurement in the prwvious years, but all sorts of measures were taken to ensure that the cultivator gets the Minimun support price. Cotton corporation of India is the procuring agency from the government side, besides a number of private licence holders are also allowed to procure cotton from the RMC mandis. The major issue rhis year is that the CCI wil procuring the cotton not at the MSP, but at the prevailing market rate determibed by the mumbau head office. To safe guard the interest of the farmers the district administration has instructed the RMCs to test check 20 % of the cotton growing farmers, whther they have got the right price for their produce and to ensure that there is no distress sale to private parties. Also they have been instructed to videograph atleast one hour of procurement transactions at different times of the day to ensure transperancy in the procurement process. This year owing to the cyclonic rain in the month of october and november there has been a crop loss of about 25%. This is likely to hit the farmers.
