Tomatoes give farmers seat in Crorepati Club

Tomato farmers – those with tomatoes to sell in July and August – will fondly remember 2023 the rest of their lives. It’s the year when K Ananth Reddy of Telangana’s Pulumamidi village bought himself a new tractor and a Hyundai Venue car to celebrate earning Rs 20 lakh from each acre of his tomato crop.

In Karnataka’s Jalabiganapalli village, 35-year-old Aravind has earned Rs 1.4 crore from his 5-acre field and is buying a “posh house” for his mother, an anganwadi worker.

The stars of the season are brothers Pasalappagari Chandramouli and Pasalappagari Murali from Karakamanda village in Andhra Pradesh who are richer by Rs 3 crore after selling over a million kilos of tomatoes.


Surprise Bonanza
Sweet though they are, tomatoes often leave growers with a sour taste. Arpathi Narsimha Reddy, currently a celebrity in Telangana’s Syedpalle village, about two hours out of Hyderabad, says tomatoes typically sell for Rs 300 per 20kg box.

Ananth says when there’s a glut, a box of tomatoes goes for “Rs 40 or Rs 50” – about Rs 2 per kilo. “At times, I have even dumped my produce in drains,” he adds.

This year might have been no different but for the untimely rains that destroyed vast swathes of the tomato crop. In Telangana, the acreage crashed from 25,000 to 2,000. High labour charges also made cultivation difficult. That’s when farmers like Narsimha and Ananth, who had healthy tomatoes, hit a jackpot.

When he was sowing his 10 acres in April, Narsimha couldn’t have imagined earning Rs 2,500-3,000 per box. “The rate touched Rs 4,000 on some days,” he says. “To get Rs 3,000 for a box was unimaginable,” agrees Ananth.

“Together, the 150-odd farmers in my village would have made Rs 2 crore to Rs 3 crore, pri marily through tomatoes,” says Narsimha, who is now confident about putting his daughter through an engineering course.

In Karnataka, Seethrama Reddy (49) of Palya village has already saved Rs 1.5 crore over the past six weeks and says he’ll make at least Rs 50 lakh more from tomatoes before August ends. Back when tomatoes landed him in debt year after year, neighbours used to shun him. Now, they are beseeching him for loans. “I am the most sought-after person in my village and family circle,” he says.

Perseverance has been key to these farmers’ belated success. When tomato prices plummeted between February and April this year, people like the Pasalappagari brothers didn’t flinch. They planted tomatoes again and now they are drawing up plans to make the most of their Rs 3 crore profit.

“We plan to re-invest the money in tomato cultivation and buy more agricultural land, in addition to our 25 acres,” says Murali, adding that a part of the funds will be kept aside to secure their children’s future.

Tomato Rush Is On
Madhya Pradesh is India’s biggest tomato producer but farmers there didn’t profit much as they had sold their produce before prices shot up. Nivesh Jaat, a farmer in Shivpuri who has been growing tomatoes for 16 years, told TOI: “As we had exhausted our supplies, tomatoes in our markets are coming from Maharashtra and Karnataka, and farmers in those states are getting record prices.”

But in the new cropping season, which started in July and will yield ripe berries in September, MP’s acreage under tomatoes has already increased by more than 10% and could increase further to 12-15%, an official told TOI.

Neeraj Sawaliya, the assistant director for horticulture in MP’s Jhabua district, said a group of 350 tribals in the Rama block has planted only tomatoes in place of traditional crops in the past month.

In Telangana also, farmers expect tomato prices to remain high for a few months. “I have another 4,000 boxes in the making,” says Narsimha, “if I manage to sell them at the current rate, I’ll be happy to wear the crorepati crown.”

Reporting by Sudipta Sengupta in Vikarabad, Sandeep Raghavan in Tirupati, Ranganath K in Bengaluru and Meenakshi Sharma in Bhopal