ROURKELA: Sundargarh district blessed with the horticulture-rich Nuagaon block, is a surplus producer of tomato but for the last few months, the consumers are facing scarcity of the vegetable leading to price surge. The vegetable was selling for Rs 100-120 per kg at different retail markets of Rourkela recently.
During the lean period of summer and monsoon when locally grown tomatoes are not available, consumers of Rourkela city and rest of Sundargarh district are forced to pay a high price for the vegetable procured from other states.
Sources in the Horticulture Department informed Nuagaon is one of the largest producers of horticulture crops including tomato in Odisha, while most other blocks including Bisra, Kuanrmunda, Lahunipada, Rajgangpur and Bargaon also produce the crop in a small scale. They said in Sundargarh tomato cropping happens normally in August and November with two harvesting times between October and February. In the rest of the months, price rise becomes a normal thing, they added.
However, the vegetable has been pretty fluctuating even in matters of supply and price factors for farmers. Either the farmers go for distress sale during bumper harvest or fail to get good prices due to lack of direct market access.
A farmer of Barlilepta in Nuagaon Anil Ekka said tomato is grown on large scale in the block and gets transported to several parts of Odisha including Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Baripada and other areas besides Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal. He said local agents of vegetable traders directly lift tomato crop from the farm fields at cheaper rate for export.
“In absence of storage facility, a majority of farmers have no other option but to sell in bulk at times. Very few small farmers go to the nearby Rourkela market to get a little higher price,” he said, adding, most often due to high availability of the vegetable, prices go down as low as Rs 2-3 per kg.
Incidentally, in March 2021 some tomato farmers of Nuagoan had distributed several quintals of tomato for free at the Birmitrapur town market to avoid return transportation cost and minimise overall losses.
Sundargarh deputy director of horticulture (DDH) Mansingh Soren said Sundargarh is a bulk producer of tomato and local farmer interest groups and Farmer Producer Groups are encouraged to ensure fair price to farmers.
“Tomato being highly perishable, cannot be preserved in cold storage for above 15 days and hence there is no way out to ensure availability of locally grown tomato during the lean period,” he said.