TIRUCHY: While cattle in other villages feed on grass and hay, those in Athavathur Santhai are feasting on cucumbers. They owe their good fortune to a farmer who could not send his cucumber crop to market due to the lockdown. A handful of people on two-wheelers enter the roadside farmhouse of M Muruganandam – the cucumber farmer – in Athavathur Santhai village, 10 km from Tiruchy. They collect cucumbers in bags and feed them to their cattle.
Muruganandam took a bank loan of Rs 25 lakh and erected two polyhouse tents, each covering an area of 1,000 square metres, a few months ago. He adopted the modern polyhouse technology and drip irrigation to cultivate cucumbers. He harvests around a tonne of cucumber every day using daily wagers and sends them to the Ottanchathiram market in a rented load vehicle. From the market, the cucumbers are taken to Kerala and Karnataka. A tonne of cucumber fetches him Rs 15,000 but due to the lockdown, in the past four days, he has suffered Rs 60,000 in losses.
On Sunday, he engaged daily wagers to harvest cucumbers as they had been jobless for the past four days. The cucumbers piled up in his farmhouse as they could not be sent to market due to transport restrictions and lack of demand. Traders were unwilling to buy from him for the time being. Muruganandam said, “It is summer and cucumbers usually sell like hotcakes in normal times. Even though the cucumbers I cultivated are not being eaten by people, it is heartening to see cattle enjoying them.
Only tender cucumbers have market value. If harvesting is delayed, we would not be able to eat them. As these cucumbers could not be taken to market because of the lockdown, we allowed the villagers to take them for their cattle free of cost. What would we do with them otherwise?” His brother Balasubramani cultivates Jaathi Malli flowers on another of portion of their land and sells to Gandhi Market traders. His business has also been hit as there are no takers for flowers with temples closed and family events cancelled.