A vegetable market without any vegetables
27 June 2008
Villagers from around Trashigang town become almost nocturnal when it comes to selling their vegetables. The set out for the town with their produce as dusk falls and return home when dawn breaks.
They go directly to shops or other crowded places and generally ignore the vegetable sheds in the market. “If I sell my vegetables in the market shed then I am sure that I won’t be able to sell a kg of my produce in a day,” said Changlu, 45, from Drametse Narang.
“It is really hard to find customers lingering around the market shed,” said Tshering Dorji, 49, who walked for an hour down from Muktangkhar to the road head. He caught a taxi here and paid Nu.100 to reach Trashigang.
He said that most of the time he brought beans and potatoes to sell and took back home cooking oil, dry fish and rice with his earnings.
The farmers toil away in their fields during the day and set out in the evening carrying their produce in jute sacks. They walk for hours before reaching the market. If lucky, they can get a ride by paying the driver a fee. In this way, they do not lose a single days work in the field.
During the night, after they have hawked their produce by the road side, or outside shops, they sleep under the awning of shop roofs or beside the prayer wheel so that they can save the money they would otherwise have to pay hoteliers.
The vegetable market shed accommodates about 50 vendors and was constructed in 2004 with an investment of Nu.1.05 million. However, the sheds remain mostly unused. The same can be said for the Rangjung and Duksum vegetable market sheds.
The vegetable market shed of Duksum in Trashiyangtsi was constructed two years back but here too villagers prefer to sell directly vegetables to local shopkeepers.
“No body uses the vegetable market shed, rather it serves as a shed for horses and cows,” said Norbu Dema, 49. Trashiyangtse Dzongkhag Livestock Officer, Loden Jimba said that they had constructed a farm shop out of the vegetable market shed with a budget of Nu.3,50,000 seeing that it was idle for a long time. “Since the structure was there, we added a roof and made proper partition so that we can keep a refrigerator for storing diary product of the farmers to sell,” he said.
He added that by July they will complete electricity wiring and provide water supply, and later hand it over to the representative of the villagers.
Mean while, Deputy Executive Engineer Karma Dupchuk of Trashigang said that the location of the vegetable market shed in Trashigang was in the corner due to lack of space. That dissuaded people from coming to the shed. “The customers buy from the shops or from those who sell on the road side instead of visiting the vegetable shed,” he said.
By SONAM RINCHEN
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Why are the heavy investments of building the sheds not being utilised by our farmers? Was it the location( positioning) that needed careful study? was it the behavior of the farmers that needed to be considered? Or was it the behavior of end buyers that had to be factored in?
Why are our most important source of food suffering so much to bring their products to towns and consumers? Why do they have to suffer sleeping in open spaces outside some businessmen’s dwellings and beside prayer wheels? Why do they have to walk with backloads of vegetables in jute bags and at the end get only a meager price from the middle men because almost half of their products are already damaged?
Its time the concerned sectors did careful feasibility/impact studies before venturing into such establishments. This is where participatory decision making can make a difference. Often decisions are seen to be taken on desk tops which do not meet the needs of the communities…
Just a food for thought for the enterprise development sectors around the country!!