BELAGAVI: The ongoing Covid lockdown in Karnataka and Cyclone Tauktae that lashed the state towards the end of last week have dealt a twin blow to the vegetable growers in Belagavi. These farmers who grow chillis, carrots, coriander, cabbages, brinjals and lady's fingers are left with no choice but to feed their crops to cattle or to let them decompose in their land.
Cyclone Tauktae came bearing down when the farmers were already wondering about how they could sell their ready-to-harvest crops since the lockdown had been imposed and there was no demand. It was at this juncture that the heavy rains unleashed by the arrival of Tauktae damaged the leftover crops in Belagavi.
April and May are peak months for the farmers when it comes to selling their yields as vegetable prices usually surge during this period.
But this year has been merciless once again. With exports of vegetables to other states at a standstill due to lockdowns there, the demand has dried up. Then came the untimely rain that damaged the cucumbers, corianders and other leafy vegetables.
Fed up, Gajanan Koluche, a farmer in Basavan Kudachi village, began uprooting the chillis that were ready to harvest from his land. "We had shifted to chillis this time to cover the loss of last year. But we have been blighted again. We cannot even recover the money we had invested in this crop," he said.
Farmers who had grown coriander were seen feeding it to cattle. Cucumbers grown by some others were drowned in the rainwater.
Many farmers let their crops decompose in their farmland to ensure it at least aided them in making the land fertile. "If we harvest them and take the vegetables to the market, there are no buyers for it leaving us with no option but to dump it on the road," they said.
