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Business News/ Politics / News/  Alphonso prices in Tamil Nadu trend lower on production boost
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Alphonso prices in Tamil Nadu trend lower on production boost

Alphonso prices in Tamil Nadu trend lower on production boost

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Chennai: While Ratnagiri’s mango farmers are worried about a poor yield this year, Tamil Nadu’s growing group of mango farmers are sleepless over the opposite; a bumper crop.

But mango farmers in the country’s southernmost state Tamil Nadu are seeing a 30% plunge in prices from last season in a good year, amid weak demand from the pulp-making industry that is facing sluggish exports. Prices in Chennai for a dozen Alphonsos are less than one-third Mumbai rates at 160-300 a dozen.

“I started growing more Alphonsos as the demand for this northern variety was picking up in the south," said VG Chittarasu, who owns a 60-acre orchard with 4,000 mango trees, including 1,000 Alphonso mango trees in Tamil Nadu’s Krishnagiri district. “But the pulp-making factories claim to be struggling and are paying us lower rates this year."

Even a decade ago, Chittarasu grew rice and lentils on his farm but rising wages stoked by increased industrialization cornered him to consider setting up a mango orchard instead as it would require only an annual upkeep and therefore, fewer workers.

While Totapuri was widely grown and pulped in the Tamil Nadu’s north-western Krishnagiri region, the state mango orchard owners increasingly preferred the most expensive variant, Alphonso, over local varieties. A majority of the mangoes grown in Chittarasu’s farm and around Tamil Nadu are supplied to processing units that tin and export mango pulp overseas. But the debt woes in Europe and jobless growth in America have hurt this export sector too.

It’s 6 am on a Wednesday morning at Besant Nagar beach in South Chennai and S. Shyam is chatting up with a surprised morning walker used to see him selling his organic farm fare only on Sunday mornings.

Shyam, an equity researcher and paints businessman, usually sells spinach, dals and rice produced at his 80-acre organic farm in Chennai’s neighbouring Kanchipuram district from the boot and back of his car every Sunday by the beach. But with the 4,500 mango trees in his farm bearing never-before-seen blooms this year, he is rushing to the beach two mornings a week with 90 kgs of organic mangoes priced at 300 a dozen.

While Shyam’s trees started bearing fruit in 2009, five years after they were planted, this year has been the best so far. The size of the fruit has never been bigger and the taste, never sweeter.

“The orchard is what will help sustain the farm," says Shyam, who is struggling with labour, power and water shortages in his agriculture venture.

Shyam expects output to double next year as the trees start maturing. But his immediate concern is to sell this year’s 4-5 tonnes of crop before they rot by doubling his weekly trips to the beach. Last week, he even started grinding some to pulp and chilling them in a borrowed freezer.

Umesh Lanjekar owns a similar-sized Alphonso mango farm but 1,000 kms away in Maharashtra’s Konkan region. He is the third-generation farmer on a 76-acre plot with 2,500 mango trees in the Ratnagiri district, ensconced between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea and home to the prized hapoos mango.

Despite switching to organic farming methods more than a decade ago, Lanjekar confides that while he has tried to rejuvenate the soil, other forces of nature are out of his grip.

“Monsoon has been delayed and rains end in October instead of September, which hurts foliation and therefore flowering," said Lanjekar, 48. “Rainfall is heavier as deforestation is accelerating evaporation and the rained out soil is losing its fertility."

From 30% of his trees bearing fruit last year, only 15% are laden with the king of fruits this season.

Lanjekar’s dilemma isn’t surprising if one looks at the sharp decline of mango production in Maharashtra. While area under production has marginally risen between 2008-11, production has halved over the same period, according to National Horticulture Board data.

Maharashtra, while being the leading producer of high-grade Alphonsos, has shrunk from being the fifth largest producer of mangoes of all varieties ahead of Orissa and Gujarat in 2008 to being the smallest mango producer today. Uttar Pradesh continues to be the top mango-growing state with Andhra Pradesh a close second.

“Maharashtra’s Alphonsos are hardly available for the domestic market," said Brajendra Singh, zonal director of the Delhi-based government organization National Horticulture Board. “Demand from exporters is very high and severe shortage of quality produce."

Still, while rates plummet down south, mango snobbery may prevent enthusiasm for Tamil Nadu’s produce, the NHB official said. Tamil Nadu is the fifth-largest mango producer behind Gujarat that has overtaken the southern state by tripling production between 2008-11.

“The Alphonsos produced in the south are still considered second grade and won’t have takers if explicitly sold as grown in Tamil Nadu or Andhra Pradesh," said Singh.

That could be good news for Tamil Nadu consumers reeling from power and fuel shortages as they can rest assured that there will be surfeit of at least one thing in the state; Alphonso mangoes.

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Published: 30 May 2012, 09:54 AM IST
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