Farmers in Arazap village are reeling under the burden of loans (video)
Sargis Sargsyan, a resident of Arazap village in Amravir region, has a major problem. Last week’s hail and wind damaged the polyethylene covering of his greenhouse. “I desperately tried to cover up the sides which were being bombarded by hailstones but I did not manage. Produce grown in the greenhouse cannot survive winds and hails, it is spoilt immediately,” says the farmer. Unlike many of his co-villagers Sargis Sargsyan was lucky enough to have part of the crop saved from the hail. But he does not harvest the crop because he cannot find a wholesale buyer. Sargis got a loan from the bank and built a greenhouse near his house. He has spent a lot of money, now plants are ready for harvest but he cannot find a buyer. “We bought 100-120 kilos of cellophane, covered the greenhouse with it, ploughed the land and planted seeds. We bought threads and paid AMD 30 for each seed. We used electricity to heat the greenhouse. And now everything is ready but we cannot sell the produce.” Sargis Sargsyan takes the potatoes and cucumbers that he grows in the greenhouse to a market in Hovtashat village where the main buyers are resellers. “They say they will buy the vegetables paying AMD 10 per kilo, otherwise they refuse to buy. They seem to be making a mock of us. Did I spend so much money to sell the crop for AMD 10?” Residents of Arazap village can hardly afford to pay water fees. “If you do not have money, how can you pay for water? We have to pay loan interests every month, how can we pay other bills?” Many in this village had their houses mortgaged with the bank in order to receive a loan. Sargis Sargsyan is one of them. “I do not know whether there will be drought or not this year. I took a loan and spent the money on this land to have income. They come and say they do not care that we have taken loans; we are to empty the house. What can we do after this? Who will hear our complaints?" Sargis Sargsyan is convinced that farming is no longer a profitable business. The family cannot solve any problem and can hardly make both ends meet. “We can hardly repay our loans. Sometimes we cannot even pay the monthly interests. I want to request the government to freeze the loans and help people to get out of this miserable situation. Villages are in awful condition. You cannot find famers there,” he said. Sargis Sargsyan addresses his request to the authorities, but he does not hope that they will answer him. He says he has reasons to be pessimistic: he does not remember when an official visited their village last time.
