ANANTAPUR: Tomato prices hitting the double-century mark has brought happy tears to farmers cultivating the crop in the erstwhile Anantapur district, who primarily experienced heavy losses for several years now. Amid the ongoing crisis, tomatoes traded at Rs 184 per kilo in Madanapalle, Asia’s largest tomato market, on Wednesday.
The tomato prices shot up compared to Tuesday. The steep increase in tomato prices has come as a blessing in disguise for the farmers. A box of tomatoes, which usually hovers between Rs 200 and Rs 300, has been fetching farmers a whopping Rs 3,000.
According to horticulture officials, the record price is the consequence of the low availability of the kitchen staple as against the demand in the market. K Gajendra, a farmer from Malepalli in Settur mandal said that he earned a profit worth Rs 20 lakh by selling nearly 1,100 boxes of tomatoes, each weighing 25 kg. He added that another 300 boxes of tomatoes would be harvested from his two-acre cropland.
Kuraba Nagabhushan, another farmer from the same village, has a similar story to tell as he earned Rs 13 lakh by selling around 700 tomato boxes. “I had spent Rs 1.60 lakh as input costs per acre to cultivate tomato. It is the first time that the produce has fetched me such windfall gain in the last four years,” Nagabhushan expressed with joy.
With the harvest of a fresh lot of tomatoes scheduled in the latter half of this month, officials expect the yield will make its way to the market by the end of this month. G Chandrasekhar, horticulture officer of Sri Satya Sai district, attributed high prices for tomatoes to reduced arrivals in the markets from neighbouring districts and states.
He said that farmers usually cultivate tomato crops in 15,000 to 18,000 acres during Kharif season, however, this time around most farmers didn’t cultivate the crop as they were not getting remunerative prices.
G Adinarayana, who works as an accountant in a tomato mandi said that though there are a total of 26 tomato mandis in the Anantapur district, a mere 4,000 to 10,000 boxes per day have been arriving at mandis as against the usual 5 lakh boxes per day. In addition to the shortage of produce, many farmers have been selling their crops at their farms itself to reduce transportation costs.