How an IT employees forum helped tomato, mosambi farmers in Telangana get better prices
Nagamani, a farmer near Thammadapalli in Nalgonda district, was planning to plough his field with ripe tomato crop, disheartened by very low prices for the commodity in the market. The farmgate prices are ruling at ₹3 a kg. (It, however, is sold at ₹20-30 a kg in various retail outlets in cities.)
“They (the vendors at the markets) would give us ₹150 for a box of 30 kg. It means that just ₹5 a kg, which is hardly sufficient for us to meet labour and transport costs,” Nagamani told BusinessLine.
The Forum of IT Employees, which has recently started working with sweetlime (mosambi) farmers, came to know about the distress among the tomato farmers.
‘Cotton must be picked before January to end PBW infestation’
With the cotton season in Maharashtra is about to end, this year also saw the continual attacks of Pink Boll Worms (PBW) on the crop.
In order to break the life cycle of PBW, the local Krishi Vigyan Kendras and Agriculture Universities have recommended farmers to terminate their cotton crop in Maharashtra by December.
However, the crops are still in the fields in several cotton-growing districts. According to the State Sowing Report on October 10 for kharif season, the area under the crop had reached 42.83 lakh hectares, while the average is 41.83 lakh hectares. In major districts such as Yavatmal, cotton was planted on 4.65 lakh hectares and 5.30 lakh hectares in Jalgaon.
Amul marketer GCMMF to invest ₹1,200 crore to ramp up capacity
Dairy major Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd (GCMMF), which markets Amul brand of food products, has lined up fresh investments to ramp up capacities in major markets including Kolkata and Andhra Pradesh besides its strong-hold Gujarat.
The Federation is set to invest over ₹1,200 crore towards additional milk processing and value-addition capacities in these regions in the next two years.
