Farmers in major crisis as tomato prices crash in Telangana

Tomato farmers are facing a major crisis in Telangana as they are hardly getting Rs 5 per kg, and in some places, a shocking Rs 2.5 per kg for their crop, one of the most essential ingredients in the menu in almost every home here.

After spending so much time and money on the crop for the last two to three months, the farmers were not even getting the labour wages spent on harvesting them. While the vegetable is being sold at Rs 10 a kg to Rs 15 a kg in the retail market, farmers are getting just Rs 5 per kg. In Siddipet, some farmers even abandoned their crop after some traders offered them just Rs 2.5 a kg!

Farmers in the erstwhile Medak district had cultivated the crop in about 2,000 acres but the slump in the price for the last two months has pushed them into a serious crisis. The price dip has once again exposed a lack of guidance from the Horticulture Department on how to cultivate the crop and to what extent, apart from exposing the lack of support from the State government for the farming community.

A farmer, Vadithya Lachiram Nayak from Shivvampet mandal, came all the way carrying a couple of quintals of tomato to the Sangareddy Sunday market hoping to get some good price. However, he could hardly get Rs 15 per kg. Nayak said he had to sell the vegetables at



Rs 10 per kg by evening since he could not take them back. He had sold the rest of the harvest to traders at Rs 5 kg at his farm. Since there were no cold storage or processing units in the erstwhile Medak, tomato farmers are now in deep financial trouble.

Another farmer, Ravi Goud, who was in the news for setting his crop on fire a month ago, said the Horticulture Department must guide them on when to cultivate the crop and when they should not. He had removed his two-acre tomato crop as there was no hope of getting good returns. The farmers had spent Rs.50,000 to Rs.70,000 on each acre but had no hopes of getting even their investment back.

Many tomato farmers in Siddipet abandoned their crop as traders offered just Rs 2.5 per kg. Even farmers who took their harvest to sell it in Sididpet on their own, had to sell it at Rs 8 per kg to consumers. Since the farmers had to spend Rs 40 on each of the 25 kg boxes on transportation in addition to labourer’s wage, young a farmer Chatri Srikanth, a native of Kondapur in Mirudoddi mandal, said he had decided not to harvest the crop. Until a week ago, Srikanth said they had got Rs 100 per a 25 kg box. However, traders offered just Rs 60 per 25 kg box on Sunday, prompting Srikanth and another half a dozen other farmers in Kondapur to abandon the crop.