The reason is not too difficult to fathom. The torrential and excessive downpours that have repeatedly lashed the state’s fertile countryside have take their toll on vegetable production, especially the leafy ones.
What this has directly resulted in is a drastic reduction in the amount of vegetables harvested, leading to a heavily-skewed supply-demand situation, in the city.
For instance, the Navi Mumbai-located Agricultural Produce Marketing (APMC), which is responsible for supplying Mumbai’s vegetables, has witnessed a sharp drop in the number of supply trucks it logs in daily.
According to APMC’s acting secretary D B Goswami, even if a crop is left unscathed by the heavy rains, the flooding in several key areas of the state impairs movement of the trucks attempting to bring them into the city.
“Last year, on an average, the first week of July saw around 600 trucks bringing vegetables to our market daily.
This year, the average figure logged for the first three days of this month, is just over 250 a day. So you can imagine what a shortfall that is,” said Goswami.
Situation to remain bleak for sometime
Goswami explained that three-fourths of Maharashtra’s vegetable supplies come from the four centres of Nagpur, Nasik, Pune and Solapur.
But the rains have proved to be detrimental to the business, with leafy vegetables being affected the most. “We have even heard that rains have succeeded in completely wiping off vegetable crops in large parts of the state,” he said.
And the situation is not going to improve any time soon. “It will take up to a fortnight for the supplies to get back to normal, if the rains don’t play spoilsport again,” said Goswami.
Onion prices are the hardest hit, again
The old bane for politicians and public alike – onions – are back in the picture again for all the wrong reasons. The APMC’s deputy secretary D D Kamble told Mumbai Mirror that Mumbai needs at least 100 trucks of onion stocks alone on a daily basis.
“This year, due to the heavy rains, the supply has been badly hit and this has tripled onion prices!” he said, adding that onions now cost from Rs 800 to Rs 1,100 per quintal (100kgs) compared to last year’s Rs 260-480.
Fortunately, the only saving grace is potatoes the prices of which have actually gone down – from Rs 700 per quintal to Rs 600 – owing to a bumper crop.
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