Tomato price crash forces farmers to dump produce

Tomato price crash in Mysuru leaves farmers distraught, call for MSP and food processing industry support grows.

A sharp crash in tomato prices has left farmers in and around Mysuru distraught, forcing many to dump the produce on roadsides and at the APMC Yard, on Wednesday.

Though there was movement of tomatoes by way of bulk purchase for some time, the prices fluctuated and began to hover around ₹12 to ₹15 per kg. If purchased in bulk or wholesale, farmers were prepared to sell it at as low as ₹8 per kg.

But with supply exceeding demand, the prices crashed and many of the cultivators were forced to dump the produce and return home sustaining a loss.

Bardanapura Nagaraj, a farmer and district secretary of Raitha Mitra, a farmer producers company, said that the  cost of cultivation ranges between ₹60,000 and ₹1 lakh per acre, depending on the method and input costs.

But farmers were finding it uneconomical to even harvest and transport their produce, and many were not even harvesting the crop so as to save on labour charges and thus cut their loss, said Mr. Nagaraj.

He said farmers faced the vagaries of nature on one hand and market rate fluctuation on the other and their lives had become miserable. Lack of cold storage infrastructure for perishable commodities such as tomatoes only worsened the situation, he added.

Tomatoes from the Mysuru region are usually transported to distant markets, including Nashik in Maharashtra, as well as to Kerala and Tamil Nadu.