Over 1,000km journey for ₹100 a kg, tomatoes land consumers in a soup

Nagpur: Tomatoes that are reaching dinner plates of Nagpurians travel a long distance — as much as the skyrocketing rates of the luscious vegetable, these days. Amid the rates touching Rs100 a kg due to shortage, bulk traders in Nagpur say they are solely depending on the crop that is coming from farms in Mandapalli in Andhra Pradesh or Chintamani in Karnataka, both nearly 1,000km away.
“These places are 500km away even from Hyderabad. Truckloads of tomatoes come from such centres in Andhra or Karnataka supplying to markets like Durg or Rajnandgaon in Chhattisgarh, Gondia in Maharashtra, finally reaching Nagpur before going further ahead,” says Nandkishore Gaur of the Nagpur Vegetable Merchants Association.

Farmers in the southern states would be soon sowing fresh crop. The supplies may only ease after that. The rates are expected to be high at least for a month, says Vinod Bhaise, the association’s president. Though the fresh crop will only begin arriving in August-September, say traders.
Supplies come from Nashik and Sambhajinagar too. But dismayed by the sharp dip in the rates in April, farmers in Maharashtra decided to neglect the standing crops which drastically reduced the supplies from within Maharashtra. Adverse climatic conditions like dry spell in June and unseasonal rain amid summer are also being attributed to the fall in production.
The desi tomato used for direct cooking comes from these areas. Another variety used to make soups and salad comes from Nashik, say traders.
Bhaise also says that supply from other states is over and the climate has affected production leading to rate increase.
Not much tomato is grown in the region due to hot climatic conditions. Apart from some locally grown crop, bulk traders depend on long distance supplies. Tomatoes reach Nagpur from Jaipur in Rajasthan, neighbouring Chhindwara, Andhra, Karnataka to even Nashik, and Sambhajinagar in the state. The supplies from each centres are cyclical. With arrivals drying up from the other centres the only reliable source of supply for Nagpur is from down south, say the traders.
Although the season is over in other centres, there is some amount of supplies which remain. This year there is hardly any arrival from area other than the southern states, says Gaur. There have been changes in weather but the crop in south has not been impacted much, he says.
Shankar Dikhley, a farmer from Nashik, said the rates touching as low as Rs2 a kg in April disappointed farmers and a large number of them gave up on the maintenance of the standing crop. The production could have been maintained by proper spraying of pesticides and other methods. But the farmers thought it would not be possible to even recover the expenses. In the end, many of them left the crop for the sheep to graze,’ said Dikhley.