Wholesale prices of Indian tomatoes have crashed by nearly 54 percent (on an average) between November 2017 and 2018. With nearly a 78 percent dip, Maharashtra recorded the maximum drop in tomato prices, followed by Gujarat (73.38 percent), Karnataka (70.53 percent), Andhra Pradesh (69 percent) and Jammu & Kashmir (67.21 percent).
The average price of tomatoes in the past five years has come down by nearly 15 percent. This dip was mostly seen in August (80 percent) and September (54 percent). While tomatoes remained cheaper in mandis in seven months during the year, there was a significant rise (13 to 27 percent) in May and June.
Even as consumers did not benefit much from this price variation, farmers did suffer extensively. Most of the 2018 farmer protests were around perishable produces like tomatoes and the like.
According to downtoearth.org.in, the production of tomato during the year 2017-18 is estimated to be about 6.4 percent lower as compared to the previous year. However, when compared with the past five years’ average production, it is 4.4 percent higher. Also, tomato production went up by more than 20 percent from 2014-15 to 2016-17 (from 16.4 million tonnes to 20.7 tonnes).
