Has it shaken your kitchen too? Making sense of India's climate-driven tomato crisis
Indian cuisine, renowned for its diverse range of dishes, heavily relies on the indispensable tomato. However, this culinary essential in recent days has been banished from homes and restaurant menus across the country.
The exorbitant surge in tomato prices, exceeding 400 per cent, can be attributed to crop failures resulting from scorching heat wave and torrential rains, as reported by farmers and agriculture experts.
Recent data from the Department of Consumer Affairs reveals that a kilogramme (2.2 pounds) of tomatoes in New Delhi now costs a staggering Rs 138 ($1.68), marking a significant five-fold increase from Rs 27 ($0.33) in January.
Chhavi Sharma, who runs a home kitchen in Noida, told WION that the price hike has disturbed her set menu for the week.
"I predominantly design my meal plans based on profit margins, which are already quite narrow. However, with the sharp rise in tomato prices, I have been compelled to decrease its usage and adjust the pricing of my meal plans," she said.
Sharma’s business isn’t the only one affected. McDonald's (McD) has temporarily discontinued serving tomatoes in their burgers in some of their branches nationwide.
The decision is attributed to both quality concerns and a limited supply of tomatoes. Connaught Plaza Restaurants, which oversees McDonald's franchises in the northern and eastern parts of India, displayed notices outside the affected restaurants, stating that they were unable to procure an adequate quantity of tomatoes that met their stringent quality standards.
This development gained widespread attention on social media, with Raghav Chadha, a member of parliament from the Aam Aadmi Party, sharing photos of the notices.
“Even McDonald’s can’t afford tomatoes anymore,” Chadha wrote on Twitter. “Be it in our homes or restaurants, with inflation spiralling out of control, the government has turned happy meals into sad meals.”
Climate change-related extreme weather events are a significant contributing factor to the present scarcity of tomatoes, said Nimish Singh, Associate Fellow at the Earth Science and Climate Change Division, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).
“This year, India experienced early summer with high temperatures in February and heat waves in March and April. Further, unseasonal rainstorms in May and the early start of the monsoon caused tomato production in Haryana, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh to fail, resulting in high-priced tomatoes in these areas. Also, the heavy rainfall spells have disrupted the vegetable supply chain causing a further rise in the prices of not just tomatoes but almost all agricultural produce,” he said.
The inherent flaws in our agricultural system are also to be blamed.
Insufficient infrastructure stands out as a key drawback in our agricultural system. Vegetables and fruits, with their limited shelf life, are susceptible to damage prior to reaching consumers. Therefore, there is a pressing need for a well-functioning cold chain infrastructure to address this issue, explains Singh.
How can we rectify this recurrent problem?
At present, majority of our agricultural practices rely on high-yielding variety seeds, which have proven to be highly vulnerable to climate fluctuations.
“As the impact of climate change on agricultural productivity continues to grow, it has become crucial to promote the cultivation of indigenous crops,” says Singh.
By cultivating these native crops, we can make our agriculture climate-smart, genetically diverse, and sustainable. These crops possess the remarkable ability to thrive in their respective climates and exhibit resistance against prevalent pests and diseases, he adds.
