COVID-19/RURAL
scientists find a cure for the coronavirus and the ban on gatherings is lifted.”
Yogesh Rayate from Kadakmalegaon village in Maharashtra’s Nashik district, understands the inevitability of lockdown. “Yet, I feel more worried than ever before,” says the 39-year-old farmer. His village on the Sahyadri hills is known for grapes of table and wine varieties. Rayate owns a 2-ha vineyard and grows vegetables on the 8-ha farm next to it. On March 15, just as he had finished picking the berries and neatly packing those in crates, he heard the government has restricted activities across Nashik over coronavirus scare till March 31. “The traders we were expecting that day to pick up the 10,000 kg of grapes did not turn up. After a week long wait, I emptied the crates and spread the berries in the sun to turn them into raisins. This was a loss of `30-40 lakh for my export quality grapes.”
Just as he was planning to recover some of his losses by selling cabbage and cauliflower after March 31, the Centre on March 24 extended the lockdown period. “The timing was brutal. The next day we celebrated gudi padwa (a spring-time festival that marks the traditional new year for Marathi Hindus and reaping of rabi crops) by staying indoors,” he says. Two days later, the government exempted mandis, procurement agencies, farm operations and farm workers from the lockdown rules. But, Rayate says, traders offered me just `2-3 for a kg of my cabbage and cauliflower, citing a slump in demand and travel restrictions. A few days later, he hired a rotavator and ran it over the standing crop, worth `1.5 lakh. With no income, Rayate is not sure how to repay the crop loan of `18 lakh. Shankar Darekar, state president of the National Farmers’ Workers Federation, says the lockdown has dealt a huge blow to grape farmers who had lost 30-40 per cent of their crop due to unseasonal rain and hails between January and March.
Rayate, however, wonders if his losses due to coronavirus-lockdown would be covered under crop insurance that covers losses due to natural calamity.
akar, a resident of Basna village in Hooghly, says most onions in his village are yet to be harvested. “If the bulbs are not taken out in the next 15 to 20 days, they will become prone to rotting, while we won’t be able to prepare the field for the next crop.”
The exodus of labourers from Hooghly has also hit potato farmers, though the crop was harvested as early as February and sent to cold storages. “Potato bags are hand stacked. In the absence of labourers, removing and transporting those bags has become difficult,” says Karamkar. He says Hooghly market is now left with only two months of potato from old stock. The region might face an artificial potato shortage if labourers do not return by then.
The absence of labourers has also halted activities at the country’s 8,000 pulse mills. Industry estimates show 240,000 labourers work at these mills. Their exodus is now directly hitting farmers who have been unsuccessfully trying to obtain minimum support price for their produce for last three years and suffered a crop loss this year due to unseasonal rains and hails. The Dal Mill Association says unseasonal rains might have reduced the country’s pulse production by 10 per cent to about 21 million tonnes.
Uncertainty also looms large over Punjab and Haryana that expect a bumper wheat this year. Punjab has announced that it will begin procurement on April 15, and Haryana a little later. The procurement season has also been extended till midJune. Every year, about 1.5 million seasonal labourers travel from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to these states to join the harvesting and procurement process. This is not going to happen this year. The state governments are already encouraging farmers to use combine harvesters for the entire process.
It’s testing time for tea plantations in the Nilgiris region of Tamil Nadu and Idukki in Kerala. “Our factories have been incurring losses over the past few months, as the export demand for processed tea powder has reduced,” says B K Ajith, secretary of