Archive · 2019 · From the print edition of Saturday 27 July 2019, Vol. 27, No. 8,256
BusinessAt harvest, one buyer: farmers and the grain elevators
As the wheat comes in, farmers in the middle Talas valley say they have nowhere to sell it but the NAI depot at Kara-Bulak. The company says it pays market prices.
KARA-BULAK — The trucks start queuing at the Kara-Bulak grain depot before dawn in the last week of July, loaded with wheat from the farms of the middle and lower Talas valley. For most of the farmers in the line, there is no other buyer.
The depot, built in 1968 as a Soviet grain-receiving enterprise beside the valley rail spur and re-equipped in 2003 under a territorial agricultural credit program, was acquired in 2010 by Nurzhan Agro-Industrial. With storage for about 150,000 tonnes and a gallery that loads hopper wagons for the mills in Nurzhan and buyers in Kazakhstan, it is NAI’s main collection point in the valley.
Farmers’ groups say the company’s control of the depot and of other storage in the ISEZ lets it set the purchase price. “You can drive to Nurzhan and sell to NAI there, or you can sell to NAI here,” said Mars Turdubaev, who grows wheat and barley on 60 hectares outside the town. “The price is the same, so I save the diesel.”
NAI said in a statement that its purchase prices follow regional markets and that its investment in drying and storage has reduced post-harvest losses. Much of the barley and maize the depot handles is sold as feed to the feedlots west of Talas.