The severity of the storm saw thousands of kilos of mango fall to the ground. The fallen and bruised mangoes have virtually no value in the market. Taking advantage of the destruction wrought by the storm on mango orchards, traders are quoting very low rates that will surely ruin the farmers.
A 50-kg bag of bruised mango is being quoted at Rs 20 by the buyers, i.e., 40 paise a kg. To think that the farmers were expecting at least Rs 10 a kg, if not more, just before the storm blew their hopes off!
A fortnight ago, the farmers’ hopes of a bumper crop and consequent killing on the market had soared, thanks to the mild rain that was expected to be helpful for a huge yield. Farmers and the Department of Horticulture expected that the crop yield would cross the 2009 record of 4,64,115 tonnes set by Srinivasapura. Now, those hopes have crashed with a thud.
Srinivasapur taluk is the largest mango growing area in the State. Friday’s storm laid waste mango crop in a radius of 50 km of Srinivasapur. Thothapuri was the variety that took the biggest hit, with Neelam Rajgira, Benisha and Badami following closely. Both mature as well as tender fruits fell to the storm fury.
“The trees lost over 100 tonnes of tender mangoes in the fruiting stage and considering that from fruiting to maturation stage the fruits would have developed at least 10 times, if not more, this is roughtly 1,500 tonnes of fruit fall,” says Ramappa, a farmer from Srinivasapur.
The growers’ frustration turns into ire when asked if the Horticulture Department had come to their help.
“It has been four days since the storm. Not one officer has come and visited us,” say the farmers.
“Most of the department staff have been deputed for monitoring of MGNREGS programmes and we do not have enough people to estimate the loss,” says an officer. He suggests that growers contact the department and inform it of the loss.