Veggie prices on the boil due to heavy rainfall in the last few weeks in Telangana

Hyderabad: With the State receiving heavy rainfall in the last few weeks damaging crops, the vegetable prices in the market doubled than usual. Mainly, the prices of tomatoes, the queen of vegetables, and chillies are skyrocketing, The tomatoes per kg is costing Rs 42 in Rythu Bazars and retailers are selling it for Rs 50 and above.

Curiously, tomatoes were costing Rs 38 per kg on Monday and it saw a Rs 4 hike in a day. Just a week ago, the price was in the range of Rs 17 to Rs 25 per kg. "The major reason behind soaring prices of tomatoes is, farmers were unable to pluck the tomato crop in rain, any other vegetable can be plucked but not tomatoes.

Farmers need to wait till the rain ends to collect the produce. Moreover, the tomato is the highly affected crop followed by chilly crop. Mainly because the soil becomes very muddy and doesn't support the farmers while raining," said Sudhakar Rao, EO, KP, Rhythubazar.

"We get tomatoes of 100 to 120 kg but this time we received only 82 kg as around 20% of the crop has been damaged," said D Srinivas, a farmer. "Two to four days ago, I sold tomatoes for Rs 20 to Rs 25 and today I am selling at Rs 42 to Rs 50 depending on the freshness," said Jagan, a shopkeeper in Mettuguda.

"We are forced to sell the vegetables at a higher price as there new stock of vegetables is not available in the market," he added.

The other reason being cited is heavy rains have affected the transportation due to which the there is no sufficient supply of vegetables.