Buyers rush to farmer’s rescue who sought help on Twitter with 100 tonnes cabbage

On April 20, Hindustan Times published a piece on the plight of vegetable farmers such as Subramaniam who were piling up massive losses unable to sell their produce during the prolonged lockdown.

On 18 April, Kannaiyan Subramaniam, a farmer in Karnataka’s Chamarajanagara district, posted a 15-second video on Twitter seeking help to find buyers for his 100 tonnes of cabbage ready for harvest. Forget profit, he said he would be happy to sell his stock at Rs 3 a kilo, barely covering his investment.

The 50-year-old vegetable farmer in Voddarahalli village in Karnataka’s Chamarajanagara district, located on the border with Tamil Nadu, said that he had nearly 100 tonnes of cabbage that was ready for harvest. (Photo: Twitter/ SuKannaiyan)

On April 20, Hindustan Times published a piece on the plight of vegetable farmers such as Subramaniam who were piling up massive losses unable to sell their produce during the prolonged lockdown. Within a day of the story’s publication, Subramaniam said, he was able to find buyers for most of his crop. This includes Waycool, a Chennai-based agriculture technology startup, which has purchased eight tonnes from Subramaniam at Rs 5.5 a kilo with the option of buying up the entire lot in accordance with the demand. Several Charitable organisations in Bengaluru and Coimbatore have bought smaller lots of 3000 kilos.

Waycool procures nearly 250 tonnes of farm produce every day and sells it to large retail chains and restaurants in South India. The company has even arranged to pick up the stock from Subramaniam’s farm saving him transportation cost. “When we read Subramaniam’s story, we felt this is what our company was built for. And it was the right thing to do,” said Karthik Jayaraman, CEO, Waycool.

“With no buyers in sight I would have had to write-off Rs 300,000. More painful was the prospect of helplessly watching 100 tonnes of vegetables rot. After HT highlighting my story, I was flooded with calls from people who were keen to buy. In the process I have found some who I could do business with even in the long term,” said Subramaniam, who sold his previous harvest of cabbages at Rs 11.50 per kilo.

With markets shut and people homebound due to the lockdown, vegetable farmers across India are saddled with massive losses. Since Monday, other farmers too have taken to social media platforms to seek buyers, including a watermelon farmer from Bijapur, a tomato farmer from Sarjapur and a banana farmer from Tutocorin.

According to an April 8 report by financial research firm Credit Suisse, despite a bumper harvest in the Rabi season, the arrival of fruit and vegetables in the country’s 7000 wholesale markets has fallen by 50% to 95%, as only a fraction have been functioning after the lockdown was enforced on March 25. In 2019-20, farmers sold 284 million tonnes of horticultural produce worth Rs 5 lakh crore. Even assuming only a 50% fall in market arrivals over a month of lockdown, vegetable farmers would have lost in excess of Rs 20,000 crore.