Thousands Of Acres Of Watermelon Harvest Rots In Tamil Nadu Amid Lockdown

Thousands of acres of watermelon harvest has been left to rot in several Tamil Nadu districts as traders are finding it difficult to procure the produce for want of trucks due to the nationwide lockdown to stem the growing spread of COVID-19, caused by a novel coronavirus.

Watermelons, cultivated in an area of around eight thousand acres in Chengalpet, Kanchipuram and Thiruvallur districts, ripened, then rotted as farmers couldn't get buyers to sell their produce.

In Tamil Nadu's Thetambedd, Kadirvel walks with a heavy heart. His entire produce of watermelon on a four-acre farmland has perished. He has lost Rs two lakh, a bulk of it borrowed from private money lenders.

"It would have been okay had we lost just the profits. We've lost our capital itself, two lakhs," he told NDTV.

Having reaped good returns over the last few years, the family had chosen professional and scientific farming methods with thin sheets covering the soil to check weeds and reduce water consumption. Mr Kadirvel's son Shankar is worried about repayment of loan amid this loss. He said " We ought to pay interest and repay moneylenders. we can't evade citing this loss".

Not far away from Thetambedd, Rajalakshmi was able to sell a part of her produce but at a meagre Rs 2 per kilo - a loss of 75 percent. The rest of the produce is left in the farm to perish.

The other farmers, too, are abandoning the fruits in the farms.

"It would cost us five thousand rupees to clear the field. I have lost eighty thousand and I don't have any more money to spend," said Ms Rajalakshmi.

Experts say the losses are huge. Agriculture expert Alladi Mahadevan said, "With ten tons per acre it's around seventy thousand tons of wastage. We are talking about losses amounting to a few hundred crore".

With restaurants and juice outlets shut, the demand for the popular fruit has slumped. According to the traders in Tamil Nadu, they had to pay Rs 2,000 for a ton of watermelon to be carried on a mini-truck - a little over 10 percent of the season price.

"There is no business. What we usually sell in three days now takes ten days. Fruits are perishing and we are facing losses," said Sakthivel, one of the traders

The state government said that it has offered a free cold storage to store the harvest till month end. An officer in-charge, however, said, "The district doesn't have any cold storage. Even the one in Chennai, 50 kM away, can hold a negligible two tons".

The farmers, hit hard by the lockdown, have been demanding from the state and central governments to acknowledge this crisis and assess the losses to assist them.