Greenhouse farmers in India , who were looking to a summer of weddings and temple festival move demand for flowers , have set forth to cast aside harvest prime because of the surge in COVID-19 cases and the resultant curbs .
With weddings forced to scale down , bookings cancelled , and temple festivals banned , flowers that ring in the celebration are being dispose out of glasshouse for want of need , here in Bagalur . “ Demand or no demand , flowers will have to be harvested or the crop will be lost , ” says M. Harish Babu , a nursery farmer in Bagalur . But , there is just so long the harvested flowers can be stored . With absent demand , the blossom are being dumped by the glasshouse farmers .
hymeneals bookings in great dorm have been cancelled . Whatever picayune demand for blossom for low - key tabernacle weddings is hard to cope with due to the dark curfew , says Mr. Babu , who have 12 land of greenhouse finish and six acres of open field craw . flower are enchant at night to forefend the daytime heat . Tempos carry flush during Nox to Kerala , Karnataka and Chennai , he says . But with the nighttime curfew enforcement , the movement of the limited measure of flowers , too , has been affected , he say . For the flower cultivator , March is a dull calendar month . April , May and June bring muhurtams and ceremonies pushing up demand for flowers . “ In March , we were under the belief that the risky is over , since last year was a sodding loss . ”
For the greenhouses , unlike the assailable fields , flower production is a 365 cycle so as to keep up the capital investiture on the polyhouse .
supply to granger ’ woes is the vertical rise in input cost . concord to Mr. Babu , last year , the theme for publicity of prime cost ₹ 36,000 per MT . This twelvemonth , it has go up to ₹ 56,000 per t . The price of fertiliser and pesticides doubled from ₹ 300 per ltr to ₹ 700 per ltr . Same is the case with other vital inputs like growth hormones , he allege .
“ I have borrowed outside of bank , from ‘ kandu vatti ’ , because banks are decline to lend knowing the COVID-19 situation is bad . But flying field can not be left to go fallow , because of the capital investment in polyhouse for greenhouse construction , which itself is ₹ 50 lakh capital investment , ” says Mr. Babu .
Every alternative twenty-four hours , green house farm are harvested and the prime are lay in in expectancy of need . After 10 day of insensate storage , the peak are discarded to make space for the new harvest time . “ This has been the case since the beginning of the second undulation of the pandemic , ” he says . There is also the upkeep of cold storage , include the electricity costs , he says .
interpret the staring article atwww.thehindu.com .
