The 40-year-old farmer had earlier grown crops, such as maize, grapes, and sugarcane, and incurred losses. However, with the sudden rise in the demand for tomatoes, Lamani said he cultivated the crop and in only 45 days, he earned a net profit of ₹50 lakh.

Earlier Lamani said he used to get returns up to ₹1 lakh only during periodical harvest but now he is getting lakhs of rupees every day by growing tomatoes.

Lamani said other farmers are minting money by selling tomatoes. He earned profits in lakhs by sending up to 150 trays of tomatoes to Agriculture Produce Marketing Corporation (APMC) at Vijayapur.

A tray of 25 kg of tomatoes is giving him a profit between ₹2,500 and ₹3,000, which was between ₹800 and ₹1,000 earlier.

About 25 farm labourers along with Lamani’s wife Kamala are cultivating only tomatoes wherein each labourer is getting a ₹400 wage per day.

Vijayapur, Bagalkot, and Chikkodi belt in Belagavi in Kittur Karnataka region is known for drought and dry agricultural land. An official told Hindustan Times that due to dry agricultural land and short harvest period, farmers in these regions are choosing to grow tomatoes now.

When will prices dip?

A series of events explain the surge in prices of tomatoes including weather shocks and a sharp decline in planting area.

Between May and August, consumers in north India usually depend on supplies from hill states like Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand to meet its demand. As supplies from nearby Haryana and Uttar Pradesh are exhausted with the onset of summer in April, the demand is met by hilly regions with cooler growing conditions. Due to limited supplies, prices usually spike during this period. But, this month, extreme rains beginning on 8 July in north India damaged the crop and led to a disruption in supply lines.

Getting supplies from far away states like Karnataka and Maharashtra, bearing additional transport costs, also proved to be a challenge. Farmers in these states, and others like Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, planted fewer tomatoes due to a crash in prices last year. High temperatures and freak rains also damaged the crop in these areas over the past several months. Besides, as prices plunged, farmers took less care of their crops—to ward off pest attacks or apply nutrients for better yields.

According to a procurement head of a major retailer, “Don’t expect azadi (freedom) from this price surge before Independence Day (15 August). But even a month from now, you cannot expect prices to dip significantly. That will happen only in September with the arrival of the new crop”.

Updated: 02 Aug 2023, 01:01 PM IST