The government’s plan to buy paddy directly from farmers at food warehouses in the coming 2026-27 Aman procurement season has run into serious administrative disarray at the outset. On the food ministry’s instructions, the office of the Mymensingh district food controller has asked the agriculture offices of the district’s 13 upazilas for lists of farmers who actually grow the crop, and the request has met strong resentment.
The government’s “Krishoker App” (farmers’ app), built at a cost of crores of taka, has long been out of action. And upazila food offices are accused of ignoring the lists sent by agriculture officers and procuring paddy through sham lotteries from people of their own choosing. As a result agriculture officers in the 13 upazilas are showing great reluctance to prepare the lists.
District food office sources said 2,256 tonnes of Aman paddy were procured in Mymensingh last year, at 19 warehouses in the 13 upazilas at the same time. The government has not yet set this year’s target.
A letter issued on 30 September by the food ministry’s internal procurement branch directs that union-wise lists of the farmers who actually grow the crop be sent to the district food controller’s office by 21 October, under the Internal Food Grain Procurement Policy 2017, for the season starting in November.
Inquiries in the field show a different picture. Under the policy, farmers are to be selected in two ways: through the food department’s digital channel, the farmers’ app, and from the lists of growers prepared by the upazila agriculture offices. But farmers in the district’s upazilas, among them Mymensingh Sadar, Muktagachha, Fulbaria, Trishal, Gafargaon, Nandail, Ishwarganj, Dhobaura, Haluaghat, Phulpur and Tarakanda, said the app does not open at all after being installed on a phone. It has been entirely inactive for a long time because of server faults and technical problems, so ordinary growers cannot register through it.
With the app out of order, procurement should depend entirely on the lists of the upazila agricultural extension offices. But this too has caused great resentment. Several upazila agriculture officers in the district said angrily that every year they check the details of marginal and genuine growers and send lists prepared with much effort, but the food office does not buy according to them; it makes a list of people convenient to itself and shows procurement in the name of a lottery.
When complaints are raised, they are told the farmers were selected by lottery. The agriculture department alleges that more than 70% to 80% of the names on the lists of thousands of farmers it sends are dropped and only a token few kept on the final list, with middlemen and people of the food office’s syndicate given the remaining places. Agriculture officers face the resentment of genuine farmers in the field every year because of this, and are now reluctant to prepare lists again.
According to the Mymensingh district office of the Department of Agricultural Extension, transplanted Aman paddy has been grown on more than 270,000 hectares in the district this season. There are about 1 million farmers in the 13 upazilas. But because of irregularities and harassment over the lists for selling paddy to the warehouses, ordinary farmers are losing interest in supplying them.
Several upazila agriculture officers in the district said: “We take pains to send accurate lists from the field, matching genuine growers’ national identity cards, mobile numbers and bank account numbers. But when paddy is taken in at the warehouses our lists are not reflected at all. The food office makes its own list and gives the excuse of a lottery. The farmers come and turn on us. If our list is not going to be valued, there is no point in sending such fruitless lists every year.”
An upazila agriculture officer who asked not to be named said paddy is not taken from farmers according to the lists they provide each year. Many farmers complain to them that their signatures are taken, the money is withdrawn and they are sent away with only Tk 500 to Tk 1,000, and that they are harassed in various ways if they go to deliver paddy.
Asked about the app and the agriculture officers’ allegations, district food controller Mahmudul Hasan said the technical side of the app is run centrally, and that farmers are finalised by open lottery in line with the procurement policy, leaving no scope for irregularity. He said the app is closed through the year and the government opens it at a set time.
Imtiaz Ahmed, a local civic leader, said middlemen and small traders are the ones gaining because the app is not working and the agriculture and food departments are not coordinating, while the government’s real aim, a fair price for farmers’ paddy, is close to being defeated. Local farmers have demanded that the app be made to work at once and that the genuine farmers named by the agriculture office be listed with full transparency.
Regional food controller Ashraful Alam said that although they take paddy from farmers, they do not know them, which is why the lists of farmers have to come from the agriculture department.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report