Growing vegetables, a losing proposition

I sold okra (ladies’ fingers) at ₹1 a kg two months ago.

I had grown this summer vegetable on the advice of fellow villagers, who opined on the basis of March 2013 prices of this vegetable that I would make a decent profit, even if I were able to sell the vegetable at ₹10 a kg.

In March this year, okra prices in our local vegetable and fruit mandi, located at Lalganj bypass in Vaishali district of Bihar, were between ₹25 and ₹35. In Delhi and Patna at that time the price was ₹70-₹80 a kg, just like last year.

Price plunge My nightmare began soon after I started harvesting my crop in late April-early May: prices first fell to ₹10-12 and continued sliding to hit the rock-bottom level of ₹1 a kg.

This price level stayed for a month till it recovered to ₹3 a Kg in June, swinging occasionally to ₹5 a Kg. In late July and early August it recovered further to ₹5-₹7 per kg.

Then the much-awaited monsoon rains hit the north Bihar plains and there was water-logging everywhere. Consequently the crop stands ruined; supply has turned scarce, and prices have shot up to ₹12-₹15 a kg.

As soon as okra prices crashed in the local market, even female farm workers, who help to pluck and bag the vegetables, deserted farmers such as me.

When the prices were high, they would compete for plucking in lieu of a kilo or two of the vegetable.

I went through a similar experience in respect of bitter gourd or karela , which I was forced to sell at ₹3 a kg in May and at ₹6 a kg in June-July this year. Consumers in the cities were paying eight to 10 times as much.

The only consolation, and it is a perverse one, is that I was not the only one who lost money in my enterprise — so did the others.

The only winners, if one can call them winners at all, were small growers, whose entire families toil day in and day out, thus saving on labour costs.

Labour pain There is considerable labour involved in planting veggies, fertilising the soil from time to time, watering the plants at an interval of a week or less, spraying pesticides, and finally plucking, bagging and transporting the harvest.

Plus, there is the huge hidden cost involved in protecting and defending the crop from predatory animals such as the Nilgai, wild boars and domestic goats.

Even small and marginal farmers, who constitute the bulk of the farmers growing veggies, are getting increasingly discouraged.

Mahendra Singh, 75, who often rents me his bullock cart, takes land on lease to grow veggies on a half-acre plot in my village, is sick and tired of market vagaries, and of course, of the Nilgai raiding his crops. “What options do I have for survival at my age? But my children have already taken up other vocations,” he rued.

All farmers like to grow veggies to generate quick cash, but they invariably find that they have absolutely no control over the price dynamics, and are jigged by jobbers and intermediaries of urban wholesalers.

The informal Lalganj Mandi, being small in size and lacking depth, is particularly vulnerable to price manipulation. Absence of cold storage facilities in the area adds to the extreme vulnerability of veggie farmers of the locality.

Cost-benefit ratio As stated earlier, the cost-benefit ratio is pitched against medium and large-scale cultivation and harvesting of veggies.

Let’s take the case of okra. The good hybrid varieties of seeds sold in the current season cost ₹2,000 a kg.

A farmer would need at least 1.25 kg to plant the seeds in an acre of plot with proper spacing. Hence the cost of seed works out to ₹2,500.

Add to this the cost of a tonne of compost, including the transport cost to the field, ₹2000. Add another ₹2,000 as the cost of chemical fertilisers. Fungal and pest control over the six-month period of the crop could cost as much as ₹2,000.

Watering the plants at an interval of a week or so cost as much as ₹3,500, including the cost of kerosene that fuels Honda and Chinese-made irrigation pumps. The total unavoidable cost, thus, tots up ₹12,000 for an acre.

Now let’s look at the avoidable cost. One has to fence the entire plot, if one is at all serious about protecting one’s crop from the predatory Nilgai.

Since barbed wire fencing is out of question because of the huge cost of at least ₹40,000 per acre, farmers resort to make-shift fencing with bamboo poles.

As the demand for bamboo poles went up in the last decade in my village, their prices shot up to ₹200 a piece, from ₹30 earlier. And one would need at least 50 good quality bamboo poles for an acre of land to partially deter the Nilgai.

This entails a cost of ₹10,000. Pitching the poles and making the fence can cost ₹5,000. The total cost for fencing, that may last for a year or so, is ₹15,000.

Test your luck Even after a plot is fenced, a farmer has to ensure that it is not breached by free-roaming goats through small entry points, on top of the perpetual fear of the fencing being breached by the Nilgai at some of its weakest points.

So, one has to hire a full-time guard who could cost ₹4,000 a month.

As the total cost for an acre of okra cultivation is ₹41,000 versus the return of ₹20-25,000, far short of the cost, most of the farmers in my village no longer grow okra.

These farmers are now growing brinjals, bitter gourd, and gourd, cauliflower, cabbage, etc, where there is greater likelihood of marginal returns, if not decent profits.

But who knows which vegetable the middlemen will underprice next season...

(The writer is a farmer and an independent journalist)

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