From Rs 200 to Rs 5 a kilo in a month, tomato farmers in dire straits

PUNE/KOLHAPUR/NASHIK: A crash in tomato prices from around Rs 200 a kilo a month ago to as low as Rs 3-5 has forced growers in Maharashtra to either abandon their crop or destroy their produce.
Prices slumped after a bumper yield sparked a tomato avalanche, catching unawares everyone involved in the sector.
“A minimum support price (MSP) for tomato and onion is the only way forward to prevent this kind of market fluctuations,” said agriculture activist Sachin Holkar from Nashik.
The few farmers who managed to sell their produce, albeit at throwaway prices, said they weren’t able to recover even half of their investment. A farmer needs Rs 2 lakh in capital to grow tomato on a one-acre plot.

In Pune, prices have dropped to Rs 5 a kilo in the market. In Nashik, average wholesale tomato prices have plunged in the past six weeks from Rs 2,000 a crate (20kg) to Rs 90 at the three wholesale mandis in Pimpalgaon, Nashik and Lasalgaon.
In Kolhapur, tomatoes are being sold at Rs 2-3 a kilo in retail markets from around Rs 220 around a month ago.
Farmers in Junnar and Ambegaon tehsils in Pune district started abandoning tomato plantations the moment prices dipped in the wholesale markets over the last few weeks.
Around 2 lakh crates of tomatoes are being auctioned daily at Pimpalgaon APMC, the largest wholesale tomato market in Maharashtra.
According to statistics provided by the state agriculture department, the average tomato acreage in Nashik district is around 17,000 hectares, with production of 6 lakh metric tonne. But this year, tomato plantation doubled to 35,000 hectares, with an estimated production of 12.17 lakh metric tonne.
“In July, when wholesale prices shot up to Rs 3,200 a crate in the Narayangaon market of Pune district, many farmers started tomato cultivation in anticipation of a windfall. Their calculation went haywire after the bumper yield,” said Sharad Gongade, secretary of the Narayangaon tomato market.
Vivek Pati (39), a farmer from Kothale village in Solapur district, destroyed the entire tomato crop he had grown on his one-and-a-half-acre plot as he would have faced bigger losses by harvesting the produce and transporting this to the market.
“I would have had to spend Rs 8,500 to harvest and transport the 100 crates (each of 23 kg) to nearby Modnimb mandi. I wouldn’t have made more than Rs 4,000 a crate. I had spent nearly Rs 1 lakh on saplings, fertilisers, labour and other things,” he told TOI.
Many farmers in Solapur district have let tomatoes rot in the fields or destroyed the crop with tractors.
A group of farmers from Junnar and Ambegaon tehsils met in Manchar last week to plan a protest in Mumbai, demanding that an MSP be fixed for tomato as a bulwark against price fluctuations.