Keonjhar: Farmers in Keonjhar district have reaped a very good harvest of tomatoes this season. However, they are resorting to distress sales due to a lack of marketing facilities and cold storage in the district, sources said Wednesday. As a result, the farmers are being deprived of fair prices for their produce. Things have come to such a pass that now farmers are selling a 25 kg crate of tomatoes for only Rs 150. The bumper harvest has been possible due to the support of the Horticulture and Agriculture departments.
Currently, they are harvesting around 10,000 metric tonnes of tomatoes, but a major chunk of vegetables remain unsold and get rotten due to their inability to sell them at a fair price. They have been demanding the construction of a cold storage facility in the area to store perishable produce and sell it in lean seasons to do away with the distress sale, but their demands are yet to be addressed. Sources said that tomato cultivation is mainly carried out in Tikarpada, Rajabandha, Nuagaon, Raisuan, Mahadeijoda, and Padmapur areas under Sadar block in Keonjhar district.
Apart from that, farmers in Maidankel and Kathabari areas grow tomatoes as cash crops. Farmers in these areas are now harvesting tomatoes, but they lack a cold storage facility to store them. Fearing that the vegetable might rot, they are selling it at Rs 6 per kg. The traders, equally apprehensive about loss, are not inclined to take all their harvested tomatoes. The farmers had borrowed a lot to buy fertiliser, seeds, and even a motor pump to raise their crops and expected to pay it back after the harvest.
Tomatoes imported from outside the state, such as those from Bihar, Jharkhand, and other districts of the state, are transported and sold in the area, while tomatoes produced locally rot on their farmlands. According to a farmer named Laghu Soren, the local farmers were also forced to go to the market to sell their produce in order to make up for their losses. It was also observed that many farmers did not harvest their crops leaving them to rot on the farmlands. A farmer named Biswambar Majhi and others said that they would get a fair price for their produce if the administration could help them in transporting the produce to the districts where tomato is not cultivated or readily available. They also demanded for proper market linkage facilities with food processing units engaged in manufacturing sauce and juice to help them tide over the crisis.
A retired college reader named Bimbadhar Behera said that students residing in various hostels in the state could get good food to eat if the harvested tomatoes were supplied to the hostels. When contacted, Jayant Nayak, deputy director for horticulture, said that agriculture production clusters (APC) have been engaged to market the harvests. Earlier, the farmers were taking decisions on their cultivations, but now the APC is guiding them. As a result, farmers will not be forced to do any distress sales in the coming days, he said. Similarly, steps are being taken for the establishment of food processing units and selling the harvested tomatoes to different hostels in the state, he added.