TOUGH TO SWALLOW

Consumers are used to seasonal changes in the prices of vegetables, but this one was particularly hard to stomach.

- M.G. Arun

In a matter of just two months, retail prices of tomatoes soared to Rs 200 a kg in several parts of the country from as low as Rs 30 a kg in May, compelling many to cut down their consumption or take it totally off the household menu. With tomato prices hitting the headlines, the Centre stepped in to make the vegetable available at subsidised rates to consumers in some states, but those in the farm sector believe that only a move to higher production will offer any respite from soaring prices. That again is fraught with challenges, given that the delayed monsoon and floods in many parts of the country have destroyed newly planted crops.

In India, tomato is cultivated as a rabi crop (usually sown in mid November or December and harvested in April-May) in parts of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. However, in some parts of Maharashtra such as Nashik, and states like Uttar Pradesh, it is sown as a kharif crop, starting in June with the beginning of the southwest monsoon and ending in October-November, on the other side of the monsoon. Some of the largest tomato-producing states are Madhya Pradesh (13.4 per cent share), Karnataka (12.6 per cent), Andhra Pradesh (11.3 per cent), Gujarat (7.2 per cent), Odisha (7 per cent), West Bengal and Maharashtra (6 per cent each). “For states such as Gujarat, production has fallen by 23.9 per cent, and for Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh, the drop in production is nearly 20 per cent,” says a July 1 research note from Bank of Baroda (BoB). It attributes the lower tomato production to adverse climatic conditions.