Potato Farmers Block Rangpur Highway Demanding Storage Rent of 5 Taka

Potato farmers and traders in Bangladesh staged a forceful protest on Thursday afternoon by blocking a vital highway in the northern division of Rangpur to demand fairer rental rates for cold storage facilities. The demonstration took place specifically in the Nabodiganj area of Rangpur, where participants gathered directly on the Rangpur-Lalmonirhat-Kurigram highway to voice their grievances.

The central demand of the protesting agricultural workers and traders is that the storage rent for potatoes inside cold storage facilities must be officially fixed at five taka per kilogram. According to the demonstrators, the current financial pressures surrounding potato preservation have made it unsustainable for them to operate without this specific adjustment to the storage rental fees.

Official reports from the Department of Agricultural Extension provide specific financial context regarding the preservation costs. According to the agriculture department's findings, the actual calculated cost to preserve a single kilogram of potatoes inside a cold storage facility amounts to three taka and forty-three poisha. Despite this calculated operational baseline, farmers and traders have emphasized the severity of their economic situation during the protests.

As part of their stringent demands during the highway demonstration, the protesting potato farmers and traders firmly declared that they will not allow any potatoes to be released from the cold storage facilities for anything under seven taka. This hardline stance highlights the widening gap between preservation expenses, storage rental demands, and the market expectations of the agricultural producers.

The sudden blockade of the Rangpur-Lalmonirhat-Kurigram highway created substantial gridlock and travel delays for motorists navigating the busy regional route through Nabodiganj on Thursday. However, the disruption eventually came to an end when the participating farmers and traders voluntarily chose to lift the blockade after two hours of continuous protest.