A fresh batch of tomatoes from a field near Valmikipuram of Annamayya district kept ready to be transported to Bengaluru on Thursday. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
After a lull of three months, the price of tomatoes has now skyrocketed in several markets of the Rayalaseema districts.
On Thursday, July 18, the wholesale price of the first-grade tomatoes is pegged at ₹70 per kg and the second-grade is sold at ₹56 at the agriculture market yard at Madanapalle of Annamayya district. The total stock arrived at the market was 1,034 metric tonnes.
The traders said that the price and the yield were continuously fluctuating in the market for a week. In a fortnight, the highest price of the tomatoes was recorded on July 16 at ₹88 per kg, when the stocks received at Madanapalle market were 600 metric tonnes.
The same price was being maintained in almost all the markets, both the government and private units, in Palamaner, Punganur, and Kuppam in the Chittoor district; Madanapalle, Valmikipuram, Kalakada, and Gurramkonda markets of Annamayya district, as per official sources.
In Anantapur district too, the second-grade variety was sold at ₹56 a kg on Thursday, while the availability of the first grade remained not available.
The tomato growers in the Madanapalle region attributed the sudden fluctuations in the pricing and yields to the inclement weather during the last week. Generally, the months of June and July would bring a climate interspersed with rains and sunshine, keeping it congenial for khariff.
However, the region remained mostly cloudy with sporadic spells at night during this period. As such, it has come to impact the yield with the prevalence of black spots on tomatoes, curtailing their shelf life. This has also led to a drastic fall in the first-grade variety.
The growers said that the undamaged and big-sized tomatoes get categorized as grade-1, which mostly gets exported to the northern states, as far as New Delhi and West Bengal.
“During the last month, there is a steady line in the exports as the first grade is fetching considerably remunerative prices to the farmers,” said Manjunath, a tomato grower of Valmikipuram town.
Sayyed of Tamballapalle Mandal, a vegetable vendor who supplies the stocks to the malls in Bengaluru, said that in the urban belt, the price hike did not matter much. “It is only in municipalities and rural mandals that the customers show panic at the price rise. Hence, we prefer to take the first grade to the cities, leaving the seconds to the B-grade centres,” he said.
Horticulture officials said that the dry spell in the Rayalaseema districts from March to June adversely contributed to the tomato crop pattern.
“Because of this, the soil moisture got reduced beyond the required levels, and this impacted the firstlings from June onwards with stunted sizes,” a field official said.
However, the situation of fluctuating yields is expected to continue till the second week of August. “With the festivals lining up from August onward, the prices might not show any remarkable decline this year,” a trader observed
