Golaghat, May 30: Hundreds of tomato farmers in Golaghat's Merapani are staring at crippling losses after market prices crashed to as low as Rs 1 per kilogram, leaving them unable to recover even a fraction of their cultivation costs.
The crisis has hit hardest in the greater Doyang area of Merapani, a region with an established tradition of vegetable cultivation.
Farmers who invested heavily in seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, irrigation and labour had anticipated a profitable return. Instead, they are confronting prices so low that transporting tomatoes to market costs more than what they earn from the sale.
"We worked for months hoping for a good harvest, but today our tomatoes have virtually no value in the market," said a woman farmer from the area, echoing the anguish of scores of growers in similar circumstances.
For many families, the financial exposure is severe. Farmers say they had pooled savings and taken loans from banks and private lenders in anticipation of better returns. With the market having collapsed, repayment is now a source of dread.
"Traders are offering barely Rs 1 per kilogram. We could not even recover a small portion of our investment. Much of the produce has spoiled because there are no buyers. We took loans to cultivate nearly 10 bighas of land, and now we are worried about how we will repay those loans and support our families," another farmer said.
In several cases, traders have refused to purchase the produce altogether, leaving farmers with no option but to let harvested tomatoes perish or divert them as cattle feed.
Farmers and local observers point to the absence of cold storage facilities and crop preservation infrastructure as a key structural failure amplifying the crisis.
Unlike larger agricultural markets where produce can be held back until prices stabilise, growers in Merapani must sell immediately after harvest, leaving them entirely at the mercy of prevailing market rates.
"The biggest challenge is that we have nowhere to store the tomatoes. If there were cold storage facilities, we could at least wait for prices to stabilise. Instead, we are being forced to sell at throwaway prices or let the produce go to waste," said another farmer.
Growers argue that while they absorb the full risk of cultivation, they receive little protection when markets turn against them.
Price volatility, they say, has become increasingly frequent, but the support mechanisms in place remain wholly inadequate.
The price crash has triggered widespread anger, with farmers accusing authorities of failing to provide adequate market infrastructure and price support systems.
They have called for urgent intervention from the Assam government and the Agriculture Department, demanding organised procurement mechanisms, functional cold storage facilities and food processing units that could provide an alternative to distress selling.
Without these, farmers warn, the cycle of vulnerability will only deepen.
"We invested our labour, our savings and borrowed money into this crop. Today we are unable to recover even the basic cost of cultivation. We only hope that the government steps in before more farmers are pushed into debt and despair," the woman farmer added.