Ghazipur: The lockdown over COVID-19 has impacted both farmers and consumers negatively.
Farmers in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur district are suffering too, forcing them to use their tractors not for cultivation purpose but for the destruction of their crops and vegetables.
The yield for which they toiled for months is now rotting in the fields.
The team of ETV Bharat went to the vegetable market of Patalganga of Bhavarkol block, to know the conditions of farmers during the lockdown.
Taufik Ahmed aka Guddu of Ranipur had to crush his radish batch since he couldn't take them to the market as the borders of all the adjoining districts have been sealed.
He even tried to sell them in his area at an extremely low cost of Rs 1 per kg, but found no buyer.
With a heavy heart, he revealed, "I invested Rs 80,000 to Rs 85,000 on growing radishes. Now because of the lockdown, it is impossible to recover the cost. Earlier, I used to earn a decent profit by sending the radish by boat to Buxer. But because of the lockdown, boats have stopped operating too."
Guddu said he had been waiting for the last 20 days in the hope of finding a buyer for his radish but to no avail, and since he has to sow the next round of crop too, he was compelled to run tractor on the standing crop of radish.
“I had grown radish on two different plots of land and had hoped to earn a profit of Rs 1.5 lakh. But lockdown shattered my hope,” said visibly disappointed Guddu.
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