It is a story heard across India. Small farmers are left with vegetables they cannot sell when prices fall because of overproduction. Potatoes are dumped on the road in Uttar Pradesh by angry farmers and in Odisha tomatoes lie crushed and abandoned.
The situation was similar in Nashik district, a significant vegetable growing belt in Maharashtra. Tomato, bottle gourd, chilli, onion, fenugreek and more grow here. When prices crashed, small farmers wouldn’t harvest their standing crop but leave it to rot in their fields. It was cheaper that way.
In recent years things have begun to change. In. . .