Nizamabad: Hopes freeze in cold storages

Nizamabad: Turmeric farmers are gambling not only on the mood of weather conditions but also on the market forces. Therefore cold storages have turned into gambling clubs for them as they hope that the market will turn in favour of them and they will get good returns on their investments.

Therefore, for the last five years, the yield of turmeric has been kept in cold storage warehouses waiting for the expected increase in the prices. The turmeric farmers are bearing the burden of rent of cold storages, but the prices are not increasing and they are deep in debts.

Due to non-availability of exports, turmeric stocks are languishing in cold storage and not reaching the market. Turmeric prices have been low domestically for the last ten consecutive years. Farmers are holding the yield of turmeric in cold storages and waiting to see when the rate will go up.

Farmers have kept four lakh bags of old turmeric crop yield in cold storage warehouses in Nizamabad, Armor and Metpally cold storages. It weighs about two and a half lakh quintals.

In this, 1,35000 bags of turmeric are being carried forward in warehouses for the last 2 to 3 years. Farmers said with pain that 65,000 bags of turmeric are kept in cold storage even from 4 to 5 years. All over India, 30 to 40 lakh bags of carried forward stock have been piled up in cold storages due to the low selling price of turmeric for five years. Due to lack of demand for turmeric even from the Gulf countries, most of the stocks have accumulated here.

Input cost has gone up

The cost of turmeric cultivation in Telangana is high as compared to other states. Due to increase in the cost of cultivation of turmeric, the farmers are reducing the cultivation area as the ripe crop is not getting remunerative price. It is known that about Rs 65,000 to 81,000 are being spent by the farmer for cultivating turmeric per acre. Maximum yield is 20 quintals per acre.

Turmeric is susceptible to pest attack. Similarly, the labor cost is exorbitant. The labour cost is very low in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Maharashtra. The labour cost of a turmeric farmer in Telangana is 100 times higher as compared to neighboring States. With this, turmeric farmers are gambling by keeping in cold storage warehouses in the hope of getting the cultivation costs somehow. Last year too, as the expected price was not available, some farmers of Nizamabad stored 33,609 quintals of turmeric in cold storages instead of selling the same in the market. The business circles are expressing the possibility that till the month of April of this year, the price of turmeric may be only Rs 5,000 or Rs 6,000 per quintal.