The prevailing heatwave conditions in later part of the March kindled the hopes of Raghava (53), a salt farmer from Kothapatnam village Prakasam district, that he would reap a good harvest.
As the April proceeded, his hopes shattered as a majority of the workers who scrap salt from pans have contracted coronavirus infection.
The situation is no different in other coastal villages such as Chinnaganjam, Motumala, Biramkunda, Singarayakonda, Padarthi and etc., where the salt extraction is the main economic activity during this part of the year, in the absence of fishing and farm operations.
It is like the bitter memories of the Cyclonic storm Laila snatching away their ready-to-harvest produce in May 2010 coming back hunt them again. The farmers are spending sleepless nights as the salt is ready to the scrapped and just one spell of unseasonal rain will force them into heavy losses.
The weather system developing in the Bay of Bengal also has kept the salt farmers on tenterhooks. Thanks to 61-day fishing holiday, fishermen used to compete with farm hands for work at the sprawling salt pans in summer.
Now, a majority of the agricultural workers and fishermen are not coming for work as the pandemic did not spare the coastal mandals. The authorities have enforced micro-containment activity to stop the spread of the infection.
It is the time the salt extraction work was at its peak, a group of salt farmers from Motumala village told The Hindu . They had a tough time this year as the Cyclonic storm Nivar had forced them to prepare salt pans again from the scratch . “As a result, salt production has been delayed by more than a month,” explained K. Venkateswara Rao, who had taken up salt production in six acres of land.
“We are finding it difficult to find workers to take to safety the extracted salt,” added another farmer, S. Jeeva Rao.
The pandemic has not only hit hard their health condition but also adversely affected their livelihood, laments a middle-aged farmer Koduri Srinivasulu. The Union and State governments should come to the rescue of salt farmers and workers by announcing ex gratia, said Centre of Indian Trade Union Kothapatnam mandal secretary S. Swamy Reddy.
Minimum support price
The authorities should fix minimum support price for salt on the lines of the farm produce to avoid the unpleasant situation of salt farmers selling away their produce at a throw-away price to traders who formed themselves into a syndicate, he said.
Salt, which is procured at less than ₹100 per quintal at the pan level, is however, sold more than 10 times higher the price to consumers. And the farmers are not in a position to show the extent of loss incurred as heavy rain during the middle of the extraction season leave the entire pan in a sheet of water and diluting the salt content, said Andhra Pradesh Agricultural Workers Union mandal secretary P. Prakasam, while stressing on evolving liberal guidelines to assess the production loss due to natural calamity.
