A modern facility with cold storage for keeping chillies, tamarind and other farm produce has come up in Ettivayal in Ramanathapuram district.
This region is known for its ‘mundu’ variety of chillies, which is raised on about 16,000 to 20,000 hectares in Ramanathapuram, Paramakudi, R.S. Mangalam, Mudukalathur and Kamudhi areas. The farmers can store the harvested chillies in this new storage facility and sell it during the lean season for a good price. This way they need not resort to distress sale and suffer huge losses when the supply is more than the demand in the market.
The Ettivayal facility has been built on a piece of land donated by farmers and Ramanathapuram District Chilly Merchants’ Association.
Collector Johny Tom Varghese, who inspected the facility on Tuesday, said that the government had created this infrastructure so that market conditions need not affect the chilly farmers.
According to Ramanathapuram Agricultural Marketing Committee secretary P. Raja, the building was constructed at a cost of ₹13 crore under National Agricultural Development Programme (NADP). The vast space has both cold storage and non-cold storage facility, he said and added that twice a week - on Mondays and Thursdays - auction would be conducted for the chillies.
Farmers need to pay a meagre sum of ₹670 per month as storage fee for one metric tonne of chillies and ₹270 for tamarind. Farmers have welcomed the facility as they could sell their produce when the prices were looking upwards.
An official in the Agriculture Department said the price of chilly revolved around ₹170 to ₹230 per kg now, while it was ₹300 to ₹400 last year. Farmers can wait and watch and hit the market when the prices move up.
The modern facility can store 60 metric tonnes of chillies and tamarind.
