Indore Farmers Are Destroying Potatoes, Onions; They're Unable To Sell Them As Mandis Are Shut

After fruits and vegetables, farmers of Indore are destroying potato and onion crops since they are also rotting due to the closure of the main mandis, as per TOI.

Hard times

¡°At the time of harvesting, the potato was being sold at Rs 6-8/kg in mandi, which was insufficient to even meet the cost of seeds. As the lockdown extended, potato crops kept at my residence started rotting since I could not sell them due to closure of mandis,¡± said Ram Singh, a farmer from Ratankedi village.

TOI

Farmers¡¯ leader Bablu Jadhav, Narendra Singh said, in Murkheda village of Depalpur a farmer had to destroy his ready crop of coriander sown in around 1 acre, while another farmer of Badolihoj village in Depalpur destroyed his muskmelon crop due to closure of mandis since he had to prepare the farm for next harvest.

Similarly, Vinod Singh Jadhav of Baloda Takun village had bumper production of watermelon. But reducing prices to Rs 5 to Rs 7 per kg was not enough for him even to meet the cost of farming, labourers and transportation.

ANI

Another farmer of Gautampura Mahesh Bhut has also destroyed bottle gourd crops, which he had produced in 10 bigha of farmland, due to the same reasons.

¡°Amid Covid-19 crisis, rotting crops, unsold produce and falling incomes have become a major concern for farmers. As restrictions of janta curfew have halted people¡¯s movement, farmers, due to shortage of buyers and labourers to work in the farms, are forced to dump their produce as they have to prepare the farms for the next crop,¡± Jadhav said.

Not the first incident

In the past couple of days, videos have surfaced from Kolar in Karnataka showing farmers dumping truckloads of tomatoes on the roadside due to low prices.

'Won't even cover the market cost'

The farmers said that they were being offered Rs 2 for 15 kgs, which won't even cover the transport cost.

According to farmers due to the lockdown and restrictions on interstate transport, the number of trucks going from Karnataka to states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu have reduced, which has resulted in the low demand in the market.

It is not just vegetable growers in Karnataka that have been struggling to sell their produce. Even flower farmers in Kolar had recently dumped loads of their produce on the road.