COIMBATORE: After Krishnagiri, Dharmapuri, Salem and Tiruppur, farmers in Coimbatore too have shunned using the mobile tomato pulp extraction vehicle which was allotted to the district under the National Agriculture Extension Project in 2022. Farmers say the cost of operating the unit is very high as they have use diesel or LPG to run the machinery and they end up incurring losses.
The mobile unit, which costs Rs 40 lakh handed over to the Velliangiri farmers producers company which has 1068 farmers as members to produce sauce from tomatoes whenever prices crashed. However, farmers said they could not use the vehicle due to the cost of diesel and LPG cylinder required to operate the machinery.
The farmers said they have been paying Rs 4,000 as rent every month to agri marketing and agri-business department despite not using the unit for the last two years. They said they have asked officials authority to take the vehicle back.
D Premkumar, chief executive officer of Velliangiri Farmers Producers Company which is run by Isha in Coimbatore district, said, “The vehicle is equipped with five machineries to extract pulp from tomatoes and produce sauce, jam etc. But, we could not use the machines due to high operating cost.
To use the steam boiler, an LPG cylinder is needed. Apart from it, two litres of diesel is required to keep it in operation. All the equipment inside are handled manually, and three people are needed for the work. A maximum of 250 kg of tomatoes can be processed in a day. But input cost for producing jam or sauce comes around Rs 150 per kg. Competitors make products at a lesser price and we cannot match their price. So, we have not been using the vehicle for the last two years.”
U Palani, secretary of Nellikani Farmers Produces Company at Palacode in Dharmapuri said, “The vehicle was provided to us in 2019. Apart from monthly rent of Rs 2,000, we had to spend Rs 60,000 per year towards FC and insurance. We could not make any profit in the operation of the vehicle . Instead we faced loss as a large quantity of tomatoes could not be handled.
The vehicle would be useful to teach people who want to set up units to make value added products. Since we could not earn profit, we returned it to the department in 2020. The vehicle is kept idle in Dharmapuri.” R Periyasami, vice president of Tamil Nadu Vivasayigal Sangam said, “The government has spent crores of rupees to facilitate making value-added products from tomatoes. It is a worrying factor that the mobile unit does not serve the purpose. The department should come up with alternate plans to make vehicle useful.”
When contacted, Meenambigai, deputy director of agri marketing & agri business, Coimbatore, said, “The farmers producers company said they could not use the vehicle due to increase in operating cost. We have consulted with them to make alternative arrangements to bring it into use. We have decided to approach the agricultural scientists of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) and subject experts for bringing it to use either by installing solar panels on the top of the vehicle instead of running it on fossil fuel.”