By Shyam Pandharipande, IANS
Pune : It’s boom time for strawberry cultivators in western Maharashtra – a bumper harvest and the entry of Reliance in the market with a promise to buy the fruit in bulk at high rates till the season’s end.
Strawberry cultivators in Mahabaleshwar, Pachgani and Wai areas in Satara district of Maharashtra have been assured by a cooperative society in Bhilar near Mahabaleshwar that it would buy the fruit from them at a sustained rate till end March, sources said.
The Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Retail has tied up with Bhilar’s Shriram Cooperative Society for daily purchase of top-grade strawberries at a rate of Rs.200 per kg.
“While the Reliance Retail rate is not much higher than the one that middlemen offer at the beginning of the season every year, the market giant’s promise to buy the season’s entire produce at that rate till the end is what is attracting cultivators,” Maruti Gade, a flourishing farmer, told IANS.
Barkale, another cultivator who also doubles up as an agriculture produce market committee employee, shared Gade’s optimism.
“Not only have strawberry cultivators increased their acreage this year, farmers in the low-rainfall Junnar-Mulshi-Jejuri belt in Pune district too have taken to strawberry cultivation now,” he said.
The cultivators, whose crop was hit by un-seasonal rain last year, are happy this time, as the crop is good and big companies like Reliance are buying for the first time, Gade informed.
Rates in the local market usually go down to Rs.50 a kg towards end December and even lower in the next two months, he said.
“The prospect of bulk sale at the same high rate till at least a month unlike a tapering rate is a reason for excitement,” he said.
However, fruit traders, especially those into processing, like Yuvraj Kachi of Pune, discount Gade’s excitement.
“Reliance Retail is unlikely to maintain the rate at Rs.200 kg till the end,” he told IANS. “And the offer is only for top grade, mind you,” he added.
Kachi thinks that Reliance’s entry won’t greatly affect traders if the new retail major restricts itself to fresh fruit sale.
“But it will hit us if they enter into processing in a big way,” he said.
Sudam Shejwal, a leading strawberry trader and processor in Mumbai, said Reliance’s entry will affect traders only marginally as the latter won’t buy from everywhere like the new centres in Nashik and Ahmednagar.