Cauliflower, a favourite winter vegetable, has seen a remarkable drop in its prices across East Burdwan.

The vegetable’s prime cultivation hub is in Purbasthali, Kalna blocks of East Burdwan.

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A single cauliflower is sold for just Rs 1 for more than a week. Perturbed by drop in prices, the farmers are feeding the vegetable to the cattle or dumping their produce at the village crossings. High yielding villages like Sardanga, Biswarambha, Dhitpur in Purbasthali-II block in Kalna have suffered the brunt of the odd situation.

“If too many farmers grow cauliflower, meant for a single market, it essentially becomes saturated, leading to price drop. This could have been avoided if the situation was handled properly,” said Mehboob Mondal, karmadhyaksha, agriculture, East Burdwan zilla parishad.

He added, “We’ve received the information much later, when the situation had had gone out of hand. Still, we’ve taken the issue to the district horticulture department as well as the agri-marketing department.”

East Burdwan blocks like Purbasthali-I & II, Jalna-I & II, Jamalpur, part of Memari and Mongalkote cultivate cauliflower and this year the district recorded cultivation on 3,400 hectares. Earlier the district had recorded productivity at 15 MT per hectare, but this year, according to Sudip Bhakat, deputy director, horticulture for East Burdwan, “The productivity scaled up to 26.3 per MT, which might have led to this situation. Now, the cultivators have no option and are struggling.” He said, “We’d given some advice to the farmers and they’d earned considerable revenue at the beginning.”

A surplus yield drives down the prices of cauliflower, which has forced the farmers to sell their produce at much lower price and a loss to their harvest. The horticulture crops don’t have insurance cover. Cultivators like Ratan Haldar, Sujit Ghosh said, “We’ve to incur losses.” Another farmer Arabinda Das said, “I’d borrowed Rs 25,000 for my cultivation on one-and-a-half bigha and could hardly secure Rs 16,000 after absolute harvest.”