-Hindustan Times The government’s decision to scrap high-value currency has sent wholesale vegetable prices crashing to rock-bottom levels, bringing misery to millions of farmers hoping for good returns for their produce after two successive drought years. Onions sold for just Re 1 per kilogram in wholesale markets at Madhya Pradesh’s Neemuch and Mandsaur this week while tomatoes cost less than Rs 2 per kg in Andhra Pradesh and Chandigarh. A kilogram of Cauliflower...

-Scroll.in Buyers are cutting back on consumption, traders are losing margins, and farmers are paying their workers in kind. At first glance, it looks like any other day at the mandi in Bettiah. Trucks stand next to the concrete arch that leads into the fruit and vegetable market in this small town in northern Bihar. Inside the mandi samiti, as the precinct is called, hawkers sit with baskets bursting with vegetables. The shops...

-The Times of India In the finely balanced but lucrative economy of vegetable and fruit trade, demonetisation has had a bizarre effect. In distant rural areas, local vegetable prices — both wholesale and retail — have crashed as the oxygen of currency has been suddenly sucked out. Since the whole economy depended on cash, from transport to mandis to purchase prices, this is unsurprising. But in cities, where there is more liquidity,...

-TheWire.in A large chunk of India’s farmers continue to depend on commission agents and not formal institutions for credit, thereby relying on cash. It is now official. Demonetisation has led to an implosion of agricultural trade in the country. In the week following demonetisation, soyabean arrivals in select major states had collapsed by 87% relative to average arrivals over the week preceding demonetisation. The figures were 55% for paddy, 61% for guar,...

-The Indian Express Farmers are facing the heat from both collapse of demand and inability to purchase inputs post-demonetisation. Junnar (Maharashtra): The last one week and more has brought nothing but bad news for Vasant Pimpale. This farmer from Pargaon Tarfe Ale, a village in Pune district’s Junnar taluka, has already lost 11 tonnes of green chilli grown on eight out of his 15-acres holding. The loss hasn’t been courtesy drought, flood...