Seed supply woes may hit vegetable availability

Pune: Disturbances in processing and supply of seeds, coupled with farmers losing interest in planting vegetable crops after suffering heavy losses in the ongoing lockdown period, may lead to shortages of vegetables during June and July, trade insiders said.

While the seed industry is trying to take help of the postal department to dispatch high value low volume vegetable seeds from a handful of production areas to the rest of the country, farmers across the country seem to be reluctant to sow vegetable seeds after seeing much of their crop rot in the fields with the lockdown impacting their transport to markets.

“Plantation of tomato saplings has reduced by close to 80% as farmers do not want to take risk,” said Ajay Belhekar, a progressive farmer from Narayangaon. “They have already suffered heavy losses as they could not sell the vegetables due to the lockdown. With the coronavirus pandemic likely to prolong, they do not want to go for the labour-intensive vegetable crops,” he told ET.