Price drops...and farmers’ woes rise

In a nation which produces an amazing 70 million tonnes of fruits and vegetables every year, this is a pretty depressing piece of news. As high as 35-40 percent of the nation’s produce is lost due to deterioration and one does not have to ponder much to find out who is the ultimate loser because of this massive neglect of the agriculture sector since Independence. In faraway fields tucked away in remote corners of the country, there are farmers, millions of them sweating it out and painstakingly cultivating crops which finally find their way onto the shelves of vegetable shops or your kitchen.

Only a miniscule share of the price the customer pays for a kg of tomatoes or onions finally finds its way to the farmer at the other end of the supply chain. And when the crop get spoilt in the fields or during transportation for no fault of theirs, it is the farmer who sees his earnings getting drastically reduced making it difficult to make both ends met. You could call it the riddle of Indian agriculturethere are seasons when there is a huge glut of a crop with farmers sometimes venting their anger over this by dumping their produce on the roads and fields.

It has happened to tomato farmers in Kolar and onion growers in Hubballi or Gadag who, when loaded with huge stocks of their produce, decide to destroy them rather than accept the measly price offered to them by traders and middlemen. The Indian housewife knows from experience that there are months when they can get tomatoes for Rs 5 a kg; and times when the prices soar to a hundred when the vegetable mysteriously disappears from curries at hotels.

Whether the benefit of the higher price eventually reaches farmers remains a mystery; but considering the plight of our growers, nothing much has changed and it’s a hand-to-mouth existence for most of them. The latest price crash in Karnataka has left tomato and onion growers in a fix and they are finding it difficult to recover the cost of cultivation let alone earn profits. The ideal solution would be to sell them to fruit and vegetable processing facilities but the short shelf life and lack of preservation units leaves most farmers with no option but to sell the crop for the available price and recover whatever he can of his investment.

In fact the food processing industry could have come to the rescue of the farmer as they produce a variety of products from bottled fruits, jam, jelly, juices, pulp, fruit concentrate, dehydrated, crystallised and frozen fruits and syrups. But that demands the setting up of massive warehouses and cold storage facilities which has hardly received the attention of the government. Exports are an attractive option but that calls for strict monitoring of crop quality and inputs such as fertilizer as most developed countries have extremely stringent standards for import of fruits and vegetables.

Sadly, awareness on quality standards and optimum use of fertiliser is yet to seep into the rural mind which is shocking considering that almost 70 per cent of the population depend on agriculture for their livelihood. The most neglected-and probably the most forgiving chunk of the Indian population are farmers and despite being ignored by the political class from election to election, they continue to repose their undeterred faith in the democratic system hoping that some day, succour will come their way. Isn’t it time our netas did their bit of brainstorming on why our farmers are perpetually at the mercy of the vagaries of nature and price fluctuations every time the skies open up or there is a drastic change in crop output?