"Potatoes are being sold at Rs 3 per kilogram at Samastipur, Nawgachia and Begusarai but there are no buyers. Neither are there any cold storage facilities in the state. The same potatoes are being sold at Patna for Rs 8 a kg. We will have to die as we are in heavy debt. We don't even know how to commit suicide as the cotton farmers do in south India," said Mr Shaligram, a farmer from Samastipur.

He rued that ministers came and went and promised facilities like crop insurance, loans, marketing infrastructure and help from the Nafed but nothing actually came their way. "For us it is not a political fight. It is a fight for survival," said Mr Shaligram. This year alone Bihar has produced at least 76 lakh tonnes of rice, 36 lakh tonnes of wheat, 6.12 lakh tonnes of pulses but even after this bumper crop food for the 85.9 lakh families in the state is not guaranteed. Speaking to The Financial Express, the farmer' leader and a senior member of the Communist Party of India (CPI), Mr Parmanand Singh Madan, said, "If farmers in Bihar produce more, they are at a loss.

I even conveyed my study to the then food minister Chaturanan Mishra and Dr MS Swaminathan in Hyderabad about four years ago. Even last year's yield is still lying in the farms and we had to leave the potatoes in the fields as there were no takers and we could not afford to pay the labourers to uproot the potatoes." The situation is as grave with wheat and maize as there are no buyers for them either, even at a price of Rs 200-300 per quintal and Rs 300 per quintal respectively. "We have also written a letter to the Union agriculture minister and have apprised him of this grave situation. Nobody has time for the poor. Very soon you will hear of farmers in Bihar committing suicide by eating sulfas (fertiliser that can kill human beings)," added Mr Madan.