[steerryGritly]

The rain Gods have been unkind to tomato farmers and Chennai housewives who are having to pay a lot more for the tomatoes they use in their cooking with their price having shot up to Rs.40 a kg in the city this week.
The short supply of the vegetable in the markets has left vendors little option but to push up their price. Take the Koyambedu vegetable market, which received only 400 tonnes of the vegetable as against the usual 500 tonnes on Wednesday as lorries from Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka did not bring the expected loads.

Worse still, nearly 20 per cent of the tomato stock, which arrived, had perished. “While farmers are not able to send the promised quantity of tomatoes as their stocks have been spoilt by the rain, we had to dump a quarter of the load as it was already destroyed,” said Koyambedu vegetable market secretary S. Chandran.

Vendors, for their part, say they have no choice but to hike the price of tomatoes in these circumstances. “We even sell poor quality tomatoes for Rs.25,” admitted S.P. Soruban, president of the TN Retail Traders’ Association. For ordinary people tomatoes seem a luxury now . Said R. Shrimathy, a reader in a private college: “I bought 3 kgs of tomatoes for Rs.20 last week,

but I dont feel like buying even one kg today.” Meanwhile farmers in tomatoproducing districts of Krishnagiri and Salem are demanding better irrigation facilities to increase their production. “Although the western districts have the climate and soil conditions to produce tomatoes, many of the farmers there have turned to cash crops in the absence of irrigation,” explained A.M. Munusamy of TN farmers association.

- dc chn