Tomato sellers have expressed worry over doing tomato business due to the commodity’s perishability, describing it as a “high risk business.”
Speaking with Agriwatch News, the sellers said the commodity has a short life span to be handled in a season of plenty. They added that tomatoes respond quickly to heat subjecting to quick decomposition.
The sellers said they are pushed into eerie when tomatoes come in abundance without available market to ease them off quickly, which affects their business.
The traders asserted that they mostly incur losses due to some of these reasons. “the risks are too much to bear, I lost five boxes of tomatoes recently because they all got rotten as buyers were not buying as I expected which has affected my capital”, “I have gone for a loan thrice this year alone due to the perishable nature of tomatoes and there are no obvious or special way of preserving to expand its expiry”, some of the traders shared with Agriwatch News.
One of the concerns raised was a perfect way of preservation to expand the life span of tomatoes. The traders lamented that they can’t control it as they can do little about the situation. They suggested that government, precisely the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to hold a national consensus dialogue with industry players to solicit robust and innovative ways to salvage the situation.
They added that “the longest fresh tomatoes from the farm could last is four to six days whereas overripe ones could only last one to two days. In this case, we are forced to sell it at a cheaper price without breaking even sometimes, it is an outright loss.”
“Our business is full of risks and sometimes we just labour in vain. We are pleading with government to come in and help us” they reiterated.
The case was not different from pepper sellers as they also lament on similar situation. They argued that even though pepper is a bit better than tomatoes but it is the same issue in its season.
