From free to Rs 120/kg: How to prevent tomato crisis from hurting farmers, consumers The solution lies in building an information system that brings assurance to the entire supply chain
When tomatoes make it to the news, it is mostly for the wrong reasons. The pictures of farmers dumping the produce have now been permanently etched into our memories. Instances of households and restaurants cutting back on tomatoes were rare and brief. As India reels under a severe tomato crunch, I am one of the very few farmers who are cashing in on this nationwide crisis. For over three weeks now, mandi rates at Mysore for a 25-kg box of tomatoes have never fallen below Rs.1300.
Rollback to April, things were very different. I sold 100 boxes of tomatoes for Rs.64 each and then I was forced to abandon the standing crop as prices failed to cover even the harvesting and transportation cost. The seeds of today’s crisis were sown then as many farmers switched to other crops.
It takes about 100 days from the day a farmer decides to plant tomatoes to the first harvest. And depending on the weather and pest outbreaks, the produce will be picked twice or thrice a week for up to ten weeks. Compared to just a few years ago, cultivation practices have improved vastly. Disease resistant hybrid varieties, breakthroughs in crop protection chemistry, the advent of mulching sheets of various colours to suit the seasonal temperatures and easy availability of water soluble complex fertilisers along with drip irrigation has revolutionised horticulture. Progressive farmers in many states are recording yields on par with their open-field counterparts in Australia or Brazil. This is especially true in tomatoes. About 5000 plants can be raised in an acre and depending on the season, yield will be anywhere between 25-40 tonnes. Read More