Jalgaon: The ongoing conflict in the Middle East has landed banana growers in Maharashtra in major trouble. Farmers across the state’s major growing regions are now abandoning or destroying their own crops.
According to reports, it had started as a promising season for farmers in districts like Jalgaon and Solapur. They are now staring at financial disaster, with several banana containers stranded in cold storage, unable to move due to export disruptions to the Middle East.
As shipments have got stalled, harvests that were destined for international markets are now being diverted to an already saturated domestic market, sending prices into a freefall, as reported by The Indian Express.
In February, farmers were getting between Rs 18 and Rs 22 per kg. By March, that had fallen to Rs 8-10 per kg. In April, prices collapsed further to just Rs 2-3 per kg, the newspaper has reported.
“The highest rate I got was Rs 22 per kg in February. But as the war started and exports were curbed, harvest across the state got diverted to the domestic market and prices crashed,” Bhagwat Holkar, a farmer from Karmala in the Solapur district, who has 10 acres under banana cultivation said.
He claims to have invested nearly Rs 20 lakh last year on fertilisers, drip irrigation, and other inputs. At current rates of Rs 2-3 per kg, Holkar estimates he will recover only Rs 2.5-3 lakh – a loss of over Rs 17 lakh.
A farmer from Karmala recently committed suicide after a trader took his harvest, but was unable to export it. The farmer received no payment, Holkar said. Mounting debts to moneylenders, combined with no income, pushed the farmer to take the extreme step.
“I am now planning to put a rotavator over part of my field and switch to sugarcane. We cannot rely entirely on bananas anymore with the market unreliability,” Holkar said.
“The prices are so low that I cannot even recover the cost of transport and labour. I have decided to destroy the plantation and prepare the field for sugarcane,” another farmer from Baramati said.
“While in retail, consumers pay Rs 50-60 per kg, farm-gate prices have hit rock bottom. Traders should pay us a fair price so that we can at least survive,” he said.
Hanuman Dake, a banana farmer from Jalgaon, echoed the concerns shared across the sector. “With the cost of cultivation – fertilisers, pesticides, labour, irrigation and other inputs – rising even as income has fallen sharply, many farmers are struggling to repay debts and keep their operations going. It has become very difficult to sustain,” he said.
Banana cultivation is a year-long investment, making the crop particularly vulnerable to sudden price shocks. Unlike seasonal vegetables, farmers cannot simply move on to the next crop without absorbing losses from the one they have already spent months and lakhs of rupees nurturing.
The farmers are now calling on the state and central governments to step in with compensation and explore alternative export destinations, rather than the UAE, Iran, and Iraq, among others.
