Covid-19 crisis: Why are Haryana farmers destroying tomatoes and capsicum?

Farmers in Haryana are destroying their tomato and capsicum crops after prices of the produce crashed for the second consecutive year. The prices are so low at the Mandi that farmers can’t even recover the cost of production.

“You can visit any Mandi in the country, we are not even covering the basic costs. Not just Haryana, farmers from every state are suffering for the second consecutive year,” Ramesh Kumar, a farmer, told The Times Of India.

The lockdown might have worsened the situation, but vegetable-growing farmers face this issue every year for some crop or the other. These farmers go into losses because the perishable vegetables can’t be stored for long, there’s no minimum support price (MSP) and prices drop right at the time of harvest and increase later.

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Agricultural experts advise a close involvement of the government in deciding the price and quantity of different crops to be produced.

“Sometimes. the price of tomatoes will go up to Rs 100 per kg and sometimes the farmer will have to throw it. This happens when you have overproduction or little to no production. This price fluctuation is bad for both farmers and consumers,” said Dr Suman Sahai, scientist chairperson, Gene Campaign.

Suggesting a solution, she said, “To avoid this issue, many countries in Europe map the areas under cultivation and advise farmers to not plant more of a particular crop if the target amount of production for the year is reached.”

The government. along with our agriculture research centres, need to develop market intelligence and crop intelligence to solve this issue in the long term.