The humble tomato gets its revenge

For instance, as tomato prices surged past ₹200 a kg last week, the steepest ever the national capital region has seen, Ishwar Gaykar, a grower from Pune, Maharashtra, made a fortune from his 12 acres of tomato crop. Gaykar’s profit for the current season is already ₹2.4 crore, Bloomberg reported.

But closer to Delhi, Ramesh Panghal from Haryana, a farmer planting tomatoes in over 50 acres, had no produce to sell. In April, Panghal ran a tractor through his field, destroying the ripe harvest after farm gate prices dipped to a low of ₹2-3 per kg. The prices were so low it did not make sense to hire workers to harvest the crop and transport it to a wholesale market in Delhi or Chandigarh. Panghal lost close to ₹9 lakh in one season, between planting in December and harvesting in March-April.

For eight straight months leading up to the summer of 2023, farmers sold tomatoes at ₹2-5 per kg. This is much lower than the production cost of at least ₹8 per kg, Panghal said over phone from his village in Haryana’s Bhiwani district.

“Most farmers in my area destroyed their harvest. I ploughed down 3,500 quintals. Between these frequent large losses, a farmer waits for a time when he can cash in on a price spike. An assured price of ₹12 per kg will reduce the risks for us,” Pangal added.

Average all-India retail price of tomatoes surged to ₹119 per kg on 16 July, shows data collected by the consumer affairs ministry. The current retail price is four times higher compared to last month, and three times more than last year. The spike is more pronounced in Delhi—when it retailed at over ₹200 per kg, it was as expensive as imported off-season fruits like apples and pears.

The unprecedented spike came barely two months after farmers were forced to let their crop rot in the field. Call it the revenge of the disregarded tomato! Sadly, like the dreaded winter air quality of Delhi, the discussions around tomatoes usually begin with a price spike and ends with cooling prices. Until next time.

When will it dip?

What explains this price surge? A series of events including weather shocks and a sharp decline in planting area due to rock bottom prices over the past year.

Between May and August, consumers in north India usually depend on supplies from hill states like Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand to meet its demand. As supplies from nearby Haryana and Uttar Pradesh are exhausted with the onset of summer in April, the demand is met by hilly regions with cooler growing conditions. Due to limited supplies, prices usually spike during this period. But, this month, extreme rains beginning 8 July in north India damaged the crop and led to a disruption in supply lines.

Getting supplies from far away states like Karnataka and Maharashtra, bearing additional transport cost, also proved to be a challenge. Farmers in these states, and others like Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, planted less tomatoes due to a crash in prices last year. High temperatures and freak rains also damaged the crop in these areas over the past several months. Besides, as prices plunged, farmers took less care of their crop—to ward off pest attacks or apply nutrients for better yields.

“Whenever prices drop to pitiful lows, consumers and governments seem happy. But that enjoyment (of getting a kitchen staple cheap or keeping food inflation in check) usually comes at the cost of a farmer’s livelihood,” complained Kannaiyan Subramaniam, a farmer from Erode in Tamil Nadu, who has been planting tomatoes for more than two decades.

“But they should remember that a time always comes when prices spike. That is how the market is working now: extreme price volatility which is helping no one—be it the farmer or the consumer. Only traders benefit from this volatility.”

“Don’t expect azadi (freedom) from this price surge before the Independence Day (15 August). But even a month from now, you cannot expect prices to dip significantly. That will happen only in September with the arrival of the new crop,” said the procurement head of a major retailer who did not want to be named.

And it’s not just India which is facing this problem. “Hot and dry weather has affected the crop in countries like Italy, Spain, and Portugal. For the first time, India is exporting processed products like puree to Europe,” the person quoted above added.

To be sure, tomatoes are not the only pain point for consumers. Prices of common kitchen ingredients like green chilies, ginger, seasonal vegetables, spices, milk, and pulses have also surged in recent months. This has pushed low-income families to a corner, turning the sheer act of running a kitchen into a formidable task.

“We have stopped tempering pulses and curries with green chilies and tomatoes,” said Maya Ahirwar, the wife of a migrant worker from Banda district of Uttar Pradesh. The family lives and works in construction sites in Noida for the most part of the year.

Brinjals and potatoes are the only vegetables the family can afford these days. Despite having three young children, they cannot pay for more than half a litre of milk in a week. And for several months now, the family stopped making tea at home, to save on costs.

Poison apple

Originally grown by the Aztecs in South America, tomatoes reached India with the Portuguese in the 16th century. But it took three centuries more for Indians to begin using it. In between, the crop had a chequered history. It was known as poison apple in Europe in the 17th century as the elite often fell sick and even died after consuming tomatoes. Later, it was found that the acidic composition of tomatoes drew lead from pewter plates used by aristocrats and turned poisonous.

Within India, tomatoes were used by the British colonizers to make soupy broths and curries. During pre-independence years, use of tomatoes, then known as ‘vilayati baingan’ or imported eggplant, was limited to elite families exposed to foreign cuisines. That changed post-partition as refugees from Pakistan, desperate to excel in a new city, crafted dishes like the famed butter chicken and dal makhni, popularizing the use of tomato-onion gravies.

But the average kitchen across India still uses a variety of souring agents like limes, tamarind, dried mango powder (amchoor), kokum and curd.

The rich umami flavour, coupled with its easy availability as a souring agent, made tomatoes a common ingredient in Indian kitchens. India is now a top grower of tomatoes globally, only second to China, producing between 20-21 million tonnes every year. Tomatoes contribute about a tenth to India’s annual vegetable production, and is the most used perishable after potatoes and onions. Together, the triumvirate of tomato, onion, and potato—known as TOP in farm policy parlance—constitute over half of India’s annual vegetable output, estimated at 209 million tonnes in 2021-22.

Despite the massive market for tomatoes, research shows that more than 12% of the annual tomato harvest is lost to wastage in the farm-to-fork chain, the highest among vegetables, due to its highly perishable nature. Yet, an insignificant amount is processed into purees and sauces.

Process it

According to experts, adverse weather due to climate change is a veritable production risk. But it’s not rocket science to fix the recurrent volatility in prices. A mix of strategies, including better crop planning, investments in processing, and nudging consumers to use processed products like puree and dehydrated (or sun-dried) tomatoes can reduce price volatility.

Green peas, for instance, is grown mostly during winter, but kitchens across India now use frozen peas through the year. Similarly, milk is processed into skim milk powder during the flush winter months and used during lean summer months to smoothen supply.

“A support price can ensure price stability and adequate returns for farmers. The usual supply shortfall during this period (July and August) is not astronomically high. It can be met by identifying new areas conducive to the crop, supporting protected cultivation, and helping industries to set up processing facilities,” Akshay Bector, managing director at Cremica Food Industries Ltd, said. The company processes 30,000 tonnes of produce annually and supplies purees and cooking sauces to restaurant chains.

It will cost a customer just ₹20 if she replaces a kilo of fresh tomatoes with its puree equivalent, Bector added.

Intelligence failure?

A decade back, in 2012-13, Indian agriculture changed track when production of horticulture crops like fruits and vegetables surpassed foodgrains output. In volume terms, the gap has only widened since then. Marginal farmers took to shorter duration vegetable crops which can be grown in tiny plots, often less than an acre. As land parcels became fragmented, vegetables ensured quick returns and a steady income flow to farmers, compared to longer duration foodgrains like cereals and pulses.

This change in production patterns also brought with it a new set of price and production risks. Unlike grains, horticulture crops enjoy no price support. Price volatility in perishables is more recurrent as governments have little room to intervene. Unlike, say, wheat, tomatoes cannot be stored and used months later to stabilize prices. Freak weather and disease incidence is the other major risk factor for horticulture crops.

A major impediment in policy management of horticulture crops is poor-quality data on production, acreage, and prices, said Avinash Kishore, senior research fellow at the Delhi office of the International Food Policy Research Institute.

“In crops with multiple pickings (like tomatoes which are plucked periodically and not in one go), it is extremely difficult to arrive at robust production numbers. The same goes for dairy, since cattle are milked daily. We need to discuss this more and find a solution. The non-foodgrain sector now accounts for more than two-third of the value generated in agriculture. But our research and data systems are not geared to this new reality. We do not have a clear idea how rising temperatures impact perishables and livestock output,” Kishore said.

Which is why the sharp spike in tomato prices is surprising. The (annual) production and area estimates do not reflect a big shortage, Kishore added.

Commodity intelligence in India is in shambles, with freak weather increasingly adding to unpredictability. Farmers have no idea when, or by how much, prices may plunge. Should they take current market price signals for tomatoes, to plant more next season? But if every grower does that, won’t prices crash?

Governments and consumers are often caught off guard when prices spike sharply. The pain caused by tomatoes today has numerous past precedence: onions, potatoes, milk, pulses, and wheat, to name a few.

Bad data also leads to embarrassing slips. Like in April last year, India vowed to feed the world as global wheat prices surged following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A month later, after realizing that domestic production was hit due to a record heat wave, India banned exports. Production estimates failed to reflect the reality of a prolonged and still continuing period of high cereal prices.

Truth is, India still largely depends on an archaic data collection system developed more than 400 years ago by Todar Mal, the finance minister of Mughal emperor Akbar, which was fine-tuned later by the British. In this system, local patwaris or revenue officers collect data on crop area and production. There is inadequate ‘ground truthing’ (cross checking) of these estimates by using technologies like remote sensing.

So, who is to be blamed for this tomato trouble? Freak rains? Poor crop planning? State apathy when prices hit rock bottom? Or, Akbar the Great?

Updated: 18 Jul 2023, 10:03 PM IST