The fear of being infected by COVID-19 has kept vegetable dealers away from wholesale markets, leading to a drop in prices in the Belagavi Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) yard.
Around 4,500 tonnes of 60 vegetables are dumped in the yard every morning. The tonnage increases two days a week when potatoes and brinjal are brought in. Supplies arrive from different villages in Belagavi and some surrounding districts of Maharashtra. Horticulture farmers in Belagavi district alone produce around 2,000 tonnes of vegetables per day on around 3 lakh hectares of land.
Onion forms the largest lot of the vegetables received in the yard. Between 500 and 700 tonnes of onions are procured and sold by evening. Bidding starts early morning and ends by noon. However, in the last two days, there has been reduced buying from dealers. On an average day, dealers from Goa buy around 300 tonnes of vegetables from the Belagavi APMC yard.
“Various vegetables have suffered a fall in prices between 30-50%,” said Suresh Pujari, a trader. “Our daily transaction is around ₹ 3 lakh. But we have not been able to sell goods worth more than ₹60,000 per day in two days now,” he said. He feels that misinformation about COVID-19 and the State government’s attempt to close markets and advisory against large gatherings have hit their trade.
“People know that the virus does not spread by eating vegetables. But they are afraid of coming to places like markets where people gather in large numbers,” he said.
Ravikumar Langoti, another trader, said they would suffer losses, as would retail sellers and vendors in the vegetable markets in the city if the same situation prevailed for more than a week.
Azad Desai, a horticulture farmer from M. Mallapur near Gokak, said that he has let his sheep graze in his one-acre cabbage field as he has suffered huge losses. The cost of harvest and transportation is more than the price we are getting at the vegetable mundi, he told The Hindu.
He said most vegetable farmers were suffering losses, due to fall in prices. A few large farmers can absorb the losses. Others will continue to suffer. We will not have enough money to take up cultivation in the kharif season, he said.
