CHAKWAL, April 16: Mehmood Hussain, a labourer in grain market, is earning Rs1,200 to Rs1,500 daily, thanks to bumper mustard crop.

Labouring in the market for the last 20 years, Mr Hussain terms the current crop season as golden, which, according to him, came after eight years.

Contrary to his excitement, the farmers seem unhappy with the support price of mustard, terming it cheap.

Being the largest mustard producing district in the country, Chakwal’s fields are full of life nowadays as farmers are busy in harvesting and threshing the crop, while the grain market is packed with heaps of mustard and crammed with trucks and tractors-trolleys loaded with sacks.

According to Dr Mohammad Khalid, District Agriculture Officer (technical), more than 1,960 tons of mustard is likely to be yielded in Chakwal district.

But despite the bumper yield, the distress could be seen writ large on the faces of farmers who are dissatisfied with the price of the crop.

“Last year the price of per 40kg mustard was Rs3,000 but this year the price has been dwindled to Rs2,300 per 40kg”, moans Rub Nawaz, a farmer of Langah Village, located some 40km north east of Chakwal city.

“The price does not match the expenses we bear on growing the crop”, he adds and demands that the price of per 40kg should be increased to Rs3,500. “The government does not provide us quality seed and we also could not afford the costly fertiliser for the crop”, he complains.

“Despite the owners of the crops, we could not fix its rates and are forced to sell our crops on the rate fixed by the buyers,” regrets Ashiq Hussain, a farmer from Baigal Village located some 34km to the west of Chakwal city.

On the other hand, due to increase in diesel price the tractor owners have also increased the rates of threshing, harvesting and ploughing.

A tractor owner threshes the mustard crop at the rate of Rs2,000 per hour while in an hour a tractor consumes five litres diesel which costs Rs530. Thus a tractor owner earns Rs1500 in an hour.

“The government should fix the rates of mustard and other crops as it fixes the price of wheat and it should also fix the rates of tractor owners”, asks Mumtaz Khan, a farmer from Multan Khurd Village of tehsil Talagang, located some 70km away from here.

However, traders at grain market are of the view that the decrease in the price of mustard has occurred due to the bumper production.

“If we increase the rates, nobody would buy the mustard from us and in such a situation we would not be able to pay farmers on time,” says Chaudhry Ali Javed, a trader at grain market.

He says that first the farmers used to thresh the crop by running tractor on it but now most farmers are using harvester which has damaged the quality of the crop as the plants which are not ripe are also threshed. “The mustard produced in Chakwal is the best in the country as 16kg oil is extracted from 40kg mustard,” explains Mehmood Hussain.

The load-shedding has also damaged the industry of oil extraction due to which buyers are not taking as much interest in mustard as they used to a few years ago.

“I have been forced to close my plant of oil extraction due to prolonged power cuts”, says Tariq Butt. “We could not buy mustard since our plants could not run due to load-shedding,” he moans.