Anantapur: Horticulture faces ruin as corona scare hits exports hard

Anantapur: Signs of distress are surfacing among horticulture farmers in the district who number roughly 5,000 with land holdings of on an average 50 acre or less each who account for production of 80 lakh tonne of 20 varieties of fruits, owing to Covid-19 causing a steep decline in agriculture economy.

Being a worldwide phenomenon, statistical reflection will be massive and beyond count but behind the numbers are stories of people who are now on the losing side of life, produce, livelihoods and earnings that would have supported them for an year. While the Central and state governments are announcing a host of coronavirus relief measures to the downtrodden families and poor traders, etc., what will the governments do to mitigate the marketing and exporting difficulties caused by the calamity is the question dogging the horticulture farmers. If the corona juggernaut continued, horticulture produce cannot be marketed and exported and since the nation has come to a grinding halt, economy would immensely suffer and stocks of harvested fruits will remain where they are and suffer decay and damage. The damage suffered will be in hundreds of crores of rupees, and the question is if this is the picture of a single district, what will be the fate of other districts whose primary economy depended on some source or the other. Its not just the 5,000 farmers families but thousands more who labour in farms all account for not less than 20,000 families who depend on the exports from the district.

Horticulture deputy director Subbarayudu told The Hans India that a committee of incident commanders chaired by the district collector Gandham Chandrudu had agreed to make transport arrangements for local marketing within the country with effect from March 27. However, it remains to be seen how far this effort will succeed in a total lockdown scenario. Arrangements are being made by the district administration for transporting of one lakh tonne bananas, 15,000 tonne grapes and 75,000 tonne sweet orange to markets within the country.

The total investment in the horticulture sector is Rs 7,000 crore while the production accounts for 80 lakh tonne. Fruits are exported to USA, Middle East and European countries, besides metro cities in the country. Horticulture is spread in two lakh hectare and vegetables in 60,000 hectare.

The 20 varieties of fruits including banana, pomegranates, custard apple, guava, grapes, figs, mangoes, musk melon, water melon, honey melon, papayya, sweet lime, lose jackets, goose berries, strawberries and blackberries are exported from the district.