An Organic Tragedy of Plenty amid COVID-19 lockdown

Farmers across the nation are left high and dry with excess produce, zero transport, and loss of labour affecting their livelihood. Not everybody is giving up.

Puneeta Chadha Khanna (extreme left) with family

A Farmers’ Market is usually for sustainability snobs. Buy organic and flaunt the right conscience. A stream of farmers would come in with fresh produce on Sundays with veggies sans chemicals. Covid-19 then upset the apple cart, leaving small farmers in the lurch.

They have been the worst hit, claim founders of such markets, as they face a tough challenge to take their produce to customers. Unable to reach the target market, the crops, both harvested and ready to harvest, are rotting. The desperate farmers have no other choice except to feed the cattle.

The dilemma has affected agriculturists such as Puneeta Chadha Khanna, Curator, Horizon Plaza Artisanal Market, Gurugram. “Very few farmers have the means to reach their products to clients because their holdings are small. They have neither a platform to sell nor the logistics to deliver. The produce is going waste.” Exotic vegetables grown for commercial hotels and upmarket clients are being discarded in the manure bin, thanks to the lockdown.

This is a national concern. Says Gopi, who runs the Organic Farmers’ Market’s central unit in Adyar, Chennai, “Most of our supplies for Chennai come from small farmers who grow one or two types of vegetables, which are transported using private vehicles. The lockdown has severely restricted their movements. We had no supplies for 10 days, after which we received a meagre supply, which was simply insufficient. We urgently need passes for the transfer of the produce.”

What Gopi faces in Chennai, Sneh Yadav does in Delhi. Co-founder of Tijara Farms, she organises Delhi Organic Farmers’ Market (DOFM) every Sunday at THE Park New Delhi. A farmer herself, she sells organic veggies grown at her farm located 90 km from Delhi and invites other farmers to join the bandwagon. “Our organic products can’t be sold at the mandi.

We are now sharing excess produce with our neighbours and staff and are trying to find ways to process the rest,” she says. The hotel has extended her unconditional support. Her team has begun deliveries. “We send fresh produce whenever the situation permits. Only one-tenth of the produce is going out,” she rues. But all hope is not lost.

The Organic Food Club (OFC), an organic farmers’ collective in Yamakanmardi, Karnataka, supplies fruits and vegetables au naturel twice a week to 600 families in Belgaum city. Post the lockdown, things have changed and they are plagued with food wastage, says secretary Basavraj Siddappa Kapsi. “OFC is consuming the excess produce by sharing with neighbours and staff.

Our food wastage is still facing 30-40 percent.” Colleague Abhay MutalikDesai, OFC’s treasurer and coordinator thinks that being self-sufficient enables them to bear losses, but it’s the farmers who are at the receiving end. As the nation gets ready for another round of lockdown, the Sunday Farmers’ Markets have become a wasteland for food-growers.