With pineapple price sliding to ₹15 a kg for the best grade green quality and the ripe fruit fetching only ₹13 a kg in the wholesale market, the Kerala Horticulture Development Corporation has launched a procurement operation to support farmers.
Pineapple farmers said around 6,000 tonnes of ripe fruit were likely to be abandoned, as harvesting and transport operations had been hindered due to the lockdown. With Ernakulam district coming under triple lockdown, there is little movement of goods and produce out of the district.
Horticorp sources said the corporation had not set any volume target, but that it would continue procurement to help farmers. As on Wednesday, the corporation had procured more than 18 tonnes of the fruit, and the next lot will be procured on Sunday.
Horticorp is procuring pineapple through the Vazhakulam Agro and Fruit Processing Company at a price of ₹15 per kg. The State government had announced late last year that pineapple would get a support price of ₹15 per kg. The support price mechanism was introduced to help farmers when the price of produce went down below their production cost.
Veteran pineapple farmer Baby John had said the spread of COVID-19 in cities like Mumbai and Delhi had resulted in considerably slackened movement of the fruit into upcountry markets. The sale of ripe fruit, normally in Kerala, too had come down drastically with the second wave of the pandemic. Moreover, lockdown restrictions have resulted in poor sales.
The price slumped even as the festival season of Ramadan was expected to prop up demand in north Indian cities. However, the market fell just as the demand appeared to pick up in the early part of April, when the price had crossed ₹30 a kg.
