Skyrocketing vegetable price

Price rise troubles mostly ordinary people without a fixed income. Often, a person's family income depends on the total cost of daily necessities. Rising vegetable prices have upset many family budgets. In Tamil Nadu, farmland was devastated by rains and the price of petrol and diesel skyrocketed, leading to higher vegetable prices. The rollback of price rise is not going to happen immediately if you think it will go away on its own. Therefore, there should be an immediate intervention at the government level to contain prices.

Among the vegetable varieties, tomatoes are the most expensive. The price of a kilo of tomatoes has gone up from Rs 80 to Rs 110. Rs 50 for a kilo carrot has gone up to Rs 100.
Beans’ price too has gone up Rs 60 per kg beans cost Rs 60 and Rs 90. Only onions are relatively cheap.

According to traders, the main reason for the increase in prices is that they have to spend more on lorry rentals when fuel prices go up. It costs Rs 100 to Rs 160 more to bring a sack of goods in a lorry than before. In this case, the price will go up by at least Rs 5 per kg. In addition, floods in Tamil Nadu have caused extensive damage to crops. As a result, the availability of many vegetable varieties declined. When supply is low and demand is low, prices rise under trade law. With the rise in fuel prices, prices have skyrocketed. Inflation has been reflected in the government-selling Horticorp, which is lower than the market price. Therefore, the government should immediately start selling markets through co-operatives to reduce prices. Similarly, in Vattavada and Kanthalloor in Idukki district, vegetable cultivation is done extensively. However, due to lack of transport facilities, these vegetables are brought to Kerala after being brought to Kodaikanal. Even if the government facilitates the procurement of vegetables from such areas and brings them here, price rise can be kept to a large extent. But from time to time the government has ignored this demand of the local farmers.

Kerala needs 20 lakh Metric Tonnes of vegetables a year. Kerala currently produces up to 16 lakh MT of vegetables. Efforts should be made to increase this to 20 lakhs. It is estimated that 5479 MT of vegetables are consumed daily in the state.