After struggling to contain the spiraling prices of yellow gram, fine rices and other essential commodities, now AP and TS jump to source and supply tomatoes.
Hyderabad: After struggling hard with skyrocketing prices of yellow gram and fine rice, now Andhra Pradesh and Telangana government are trying hard to sources and supply tomatoes to people. According to officials of agriculture and marketing department of Andhra Pradesh, the tomato prices are all set to cost a bomb this time, due to bad crop season. Mainly, the tomatoes are grown in Kurnool, Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh, and parts of Nalgonda and Ranga Reddy districts in Telangana.
However, due to the unfavourable weather in the starting of the agriculture season, the yields of tomatoes have come down drastically in both the States. Prices of tomatoes in the Madanapalli in Chittoor district and Pattikonda in Kurnool district have been pegged at Rs 80 to Rs 100 per Kg. Even then, there are no sufficient stocks to the lifted to supply and too meet the demand coming from whole state. Also, the tomatoes are also sent from these two districts to Hyderabad. This time, there seem to be no such possibility.
“While the starting of the agriculture season posed an unfavourable conditions resulting in lack of water devastated the tomato crop in both in Chittoor and Kurnool district, which used to supply even to the Food Processing Units, as well as to different markets in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, “ said senior official from Madanapalli Market Yard.
Adding to this, the extent of tomato crops left by the end of the agriculture season has been hit devastating rain, making the stand crops exposed to diseases. This has a cumulative effect on the entire yield of tomatoes this season, he added.
Sensing that there is going to be a huge gap between the demand and supply, the Andhra Pradesh government has already started making efforts to import tomatoes from Karnataka. But, even from there the officials point out, that “required quantum of stocks is not available to meet the demand from different parts of the State. For, the tomato crop in Karnataka too has experienced long periods of dry spells at the beginning of this agriculture season resulting in the fall in the yields,” they added. Following this, officials of the State Marketing Federation are looking at different states, to source tomatoes to meet the demand in the state. “Recently, the government has constituted the Price Monitoring Fund (PMF) with a corpus fund of Rs 50 crore, so there is no shortage of funds to buy and supply for reasonable prices as a measure of market intervention. But, our problem is that we are not able to figure out the stocks for purchase,” said a state marked official.
