TIRUCHY: Excessive rain lashing continuously across the district has come as a cause for concern to vegetable farmers. Though there is decent demand for vegetables in the market, farmers are finding it difficult to get a good price owing to involvement of middlemen. It may be noted that harvest season of vegetable has started in Tiruchy amid such a scenario.
According to sources, excessive rainfall affected harvest-ready vegetables, creating massive demand at the markets across the State. Vegetables such as tomato and onion saw a steep rise in market price last week with the former touching Rs 60 a kg and the latter Rs 50 a kg.
Speaking about current market price, MK Kamala Kannan, president of Gandhi Market Traders Welfare Association, said, “Arrival at the market is moderate. So, the price of all vegetables are slightly above normal owing to Deepavali season. As on Monday, tomato price stood between Rs 30 and Rs 40 a kg, potato Rs 30 a kg, onion Rs 40 a kg, bittergourd Rs 25 a kg, ladies finger between Rs 17 and Rs 25 a kg and shallot between Rs 15 and Rs 30 a kg. Prices might go up slightly next week owing to Deepavali.”
Though there is decent demand in the open market, local vegetable farmers are not getting much benefit from it, thanks to the rain.
Tomato is being cultivated on about 250 hectares in Tiruchy. Speaking about hardships, Arivuazhagan, a farmer from Vaiyampatti, said, “Usually we harvest a minimum of 40 to 60 baskets (30 kg each). However, it has dropped between 10 to 20 baskets (over 3 to 5 baskets out of that will be taken out as damaged during grading process). Even though there is demand and the market price is decent, we are able to get only Rs 15 a kg. On an average, we faced a loss of Rs 20,000 per acre due to the prevailing rainfall.”
The lack of availability of adequate number of labourers delayed harvest process and led to tomatoes sustaining more damage. Farmers had to engage rural job scheme workers for the agricultural process, paying a salary. “If we could have harvested the tomato earlier, we could have saved tonnes of the vegetable from going to waste,” one of the farmers said.
Mohan Dass, a farmer from Nachalur, said market prices constantly fluctuate based on the arrival. Though market price gets higher, traders purchase only at lesser prices from farmers, he rued.