The very mention of Madanapalle in Chittoor district conjures up the image of Asia’s largest tomato market with over 20,000 farmers and over one lakh hectares under its ambit, churning out an annual turnover running into several hundred crores of rupees.
The financial years 2020-22 had brought a mixed response to the farmers, who observe that realisation has dawned upon them that “tomato business” was not going to be easy in the comingyears. For the first time in the history of Madanapalle’s tomato trade, the wholesale price had crossed ₹80 a kg mark in the last quarter of 2015, and the scenario was repeated during the same period in 2021.
The big difference here is that in 2015, Madanapalle farmers had benefitted when the prices zoomed. The second chance in 2021 favoured the tomato growers of Chhattishgarh, Maharashtra, and Karnataka. During October-December, the production in Madanapalle was below 100 tonnes a day, as against the regular trend of 2,000-plus tonnes due to crop damage.
Coupled with this, the domestic market crumbled with the arrival of stocks from northern States. Till November last year, the tomato growers in Madanapalle took pride in the fact that their produce remained unbeatable. “Now, the reality is that tomatoes are being cultivated in large stretches in Mizoram, Assam, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Karnataka. This scenario in the northern States is just two years old. They are now the competitors to Madanapalle farmers. Maharashtra farmers are cultivating tomatoes with scientific know-how. They are reaping bumper yields from their poly-houses,” said A. Srikanth Reddy, horticulture scientist froma Chennai-based Agri-Tech company, Way Cool Foods & Products, working in the Madanapalle region.
“During the last two years, exports to northern States had reduced, and the market is limited to Tamil Nadu and Telangana. In the coming years, farmers of Chhattisgarh, Mizoram, and Assam are set to enter the South. Each farmer in the Madanapalle area owns just one to five acres of land. In northern States, the minimum landholding of each farmer is 30 acres. This helps them to adapt to new technologies,” Mr. Reddy said.
Manjunath Kokkanti, a farmer and trader from Valmikipuram near Madanapalle, said that he had been to tomato fields in Chhatishgarh between October and December last year. “The wholesale price tag there during this period remained ₹65 a kg. The stocks were brought to Chittoor district and sold at ₹100 a kg. The same stock was sent to Chennai for a better price. While there was a bumper crop in northern States, Madanapalle region’s acreage suffered a lot due to adverse climatic conditions and lack of scientific farming methods, while the yields plummeted to a disastrous 100 tonnes, a day,” he said.
A horticulture official in Madanapalle said that gone were the golden days of Asia’s largest tomato market. “During the last couple of years, despite the COVID situation, tomato cultivation picked up by leaps and bounds in the neighbouring Anantapur and Kadapa districts, in addition to the Kolar division in Karnataka. With this, the monopoly of local growers is slowly vanishing. Despite our repeated appeals to farmers to get adapted to scientific methods, a majority of them had refused to heed our advice. Now, they are paying the price,” the official said.
Meanwhile, a nursery owner near Madanapalle said that generally, the farmers start purchasing seedlings for transplantation in the fields from the third week of January. “Strange, the scenario is disappointing now. Going by the national picture of the tomato trade and the still discouraging scenario of the hotel industry due to COVID restrictions, the farmers here seem to be waiting for a healthy change. They might delay the process till February-end,” he said.
