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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

When life gives you tomatoes -Rahi Gaikwad
-The Hindu

With crops hit by drought and the TO-1057 seed, our reporter visits Narayangaon, among the country’s largest tomato growing regions, and finds farmers struggling to cope with the failed harvest but still faithful to the fruit

Last week, the grey rain clouds over the Sahyadris seemed full of promise. A few light showers, and colour was slowly returning to parched leaves and the dry earth was beginning to yield again. In Narayangaon village in Pune district of Maharashtra — one of the main tomato-growing regions in India — the monsoon, however, is yet to wash out the damage wrought by the drought in the wake of one of the harshest summers the region has experienced.

As tomato prices soared to Rs. 100 a kilo last week, the few tomatoes left in the refrigerator suddenly became prized possessions. A massive shortage of this kitchen staple has led to spiralling prices, hitting the profits of traders, and rendering helpless the usually prosperous tomato grower to an extent where even recovering costs has become impossible.

Tomato farmer Subhash Bhor’s crestfallen countenance reflects the state of his orchard — a four-acre mess of wilted leaves and shrivelled tomatoes sagging from the stems. One of the reasons for such large-scale damage, he says, is the TO-1057 variety of seed from Swiss seed company Syngenta.  “This is the first time I have used this seed and the first time I have experienced such a heavy loss in the last 20 years. I started sowing last December, but in February, there was a virus attack. The tomatoes were infected with tiranga (tospovirus), and the fruit turned yellow, pink and cottony inside,” he says.

Bhor lost Rs. 5 lakh. This is the story of several farmers in Junnar taluka, where Narayangaon is located, and the adjoining Ambegaon taluka. “I borrowed money against my house and jewellery. Every day, I get calls asking for repayment. The tractor services have to be paid. The whole year’s income depends on the tomato crop,” he says.

Every season, Bhor sows the tomato seed and layers the earth with mulching paper, to preserve moisture. The stems are then propped up on bamboo sticks and the saplings tied with twine to ease growth. ‘Miracle’ paper is used to keep away insects and pests and drip irrigation is used to water the plants. Other expenses go towards chemical and organic fertilisers, medicine drops, and labour and electricity. Despite all the effort, Bhor reaped a field of diseased crop this year. .

“Every year, I produce nearly 7,000 crates of tomatoes [one crate contains 20 kg]. I have never experienced such loss,” he rues.

With no compensation in sight, his mother, in a desperate attempt, wrote to the local police threatening suicide if action was not taken against the Swiss seed company. Farmer suicides are not as common in western Maharashtra as they are in the more neglected, poorly-irrigated and drought-ridden Marathwada and Vidarbha. Located close to Yedgaon dam, Narayangaon is well irrigated.

“The farmer here is so prosperous,” points out Deepak Bhise, tomato grower and president of the Tomato Seva Sangh, Junnar taluka, “that he/ she has never had to appeal to the government for compensation. We don’t have public transport in the village simply because we don’t need it. Everybody here owns a vehicle.”

The drought has dealt a blow to their fortunes and dashed their confidence.

In the office of Shriram Gadhave, president of All India Vegetable Growers Association, a bulky document carries an endless list of names and complaints of farmers who lost their yields to TO-1057. Gadhave estimates that “85 per cent of flowers were burnt in a heat wave from April 5 to May 15,  of the area under tomato cultivation had poor irrigation and almost 99 per cent of standing crops under TO-1057 was damaged.”   

All through the summer, the farmers fought. Their delegations met officials, who came and inspected the damage. They wrote memorandums, staged protests, pulled strings, organised a fast, even demanded criminal action against Syngenta. All to no avail.

An official survey in Junnar and Ambegaon talukas on April 6, 2016 found 100 per cent crop damage in the fields surveyed. The team found TO-1057 crops greatly infected by disease. Based on this report, Maharashtra banned the seed. Compensation will be dealt with by the State consumer forum, said K.V. Deshmukh, Director, Agriculture (extension and training with additional charge of input and quality control).

As per official estimates, the tomato crop of 3,092 farmers in 183 villages, spread over 1,339.46 acres in Junnar and Ambegaon where TO-1057 seeds were used, was found affected by disease. A healthy tomato plant can grow as high as a person. Unusually high temperatures made vast tracts vulnerable to pests, primarily the whitefly. “Climate change has increased the population of the whitefly. It was a minor pest; now it is a major pest,” explains Gadhave.     

“Any amount of pesticide can’t eradicate the whitefly. We are afraid there won’t be a tomato crop next year,” says Devidas Bhor, farmer and sarpanch of Yedgaon village. The TO-1057 summer variety is designed for temperatures between 38 and 40 degrees Celsius. “It touched 43 degrees; you can’t do anything.”  The traders still swear by TO-1057. “It is the No. 1 summer variety,” says Yogesh Bhuchke, a trader from Narayangaon.

Syngenta attributes the damage to “unfavourable micro-climatic conditions, cloudy weather, unseasonal rains followed by higher humidity and hot weather.” In an email response to The Hindu, K. C. Ravi, vice-president, Commercial Acceptance and Public Policy, Syngenta South Asia, said: . “Our technical team visited the plots of affected farmers, explained the causes of damage and also provided them recommendations for the future. A survey is on for determining compensation.”

The market yard in Narayangaon is a telling picture of the tomato debacle. Small traders and suppliers potter from one truck to another inspecting the stock — the remains of last season’s harvest. Big traders twiddle their thumbs inside their sheds as they oversee the loading and unloading of crates. Not many invoices have been prepared.

Spread over seven-and-a-half acres, the market retains some of its buzz, as trucks and pick-up vans carrying tomatoes for sale come in, and ‘loaders’ (a local term for trucks making deliveries to places outside Maharashtra) heave past the maze of activity towards NH50 (Pune-Nashik) and beyond.

The blue, green, orange and red crates move about in an enormous cycle of sale, purchase, delivery. Tomato prices may have soared to Rs. 900 a crate, but supply is so little that the economics works neither in favour of the farmer nor the trader. “There is no business this year. What you see is only 10 per cent of the production of previous years. My annual turnover is Rs. 25 crore; this year it won’t even touch Rs. 5 crore,” says Jalinder Thorve, a big trader.

According to data collected by Gadhave, 770 metric tonnes (MT) of tomatoes arrived at Narayangaon market in April as compared to 4,745 MT last April. This month, 4,926 MT arrived and were sold at Rs. 26 a kg compared to 51,327 MT tomatoes sold at Rs. 15 last June. Locals talk of how around this time of the year, when the summer stock hits the market, there is no place to stand. Around 5,000 labourers work in the yard.

On this day, though, there was enough space to take a leisurely stroll. Farmer Sachin Bhise from Yedgaon village has come with 350 crates of which he has sold 250. In the open auction, there are no agents or middlemen between farmer and buyer. Tomato is the only item sold in this manner and the farmers decide the price for their produce.

The initiative, proposed by Gadhave in 2004, earned him much recognition and appreciation from former Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar.

The direct auction rooted out the agents and lined the pockets of tomato farmers. “When I visited markets in Ludhiana, Kota, Delhi and Lucknow, I realised traders were looting us. So we decided to form core committees of tomato growers in each village and invited buyers from these places. On the first day of the auction in 2004, the turnover was Rs. 3.2 crore. By 2014, it touched Rs. 191 crore,” says Gadhave.

The summer scare has forced farmers to think about changing their cropping pattern. Bhor and some other farmers have started growing beans to offset some of their losses. But with the onset of monsoon, fresh hope and a new round of tomato sowing has begun. As a lucrative cash crop and a kitchen staple, the tomato is here to stay. The farmer of Narayangaon is unwilling to abandon it anytime soon, seed failure and climate change notwithstanding.

Mumbai-based Rahi Gaikwad is an independent journalist. She writes on caste, human rights and general interest topics.