Visakhapatnam: After Hudhud, transactions at Anakapalli jaggery market have declined.
Hundreds of country crushers (ganugalu) are being closed as the power supply is not restored for agriculture sector so far. As a result, the production is stalled and jaggery blocks are not being brought to the market resulting in crores of rupees business being affected from for the past three weeks. Around 2,000 country crushers had to stall business of around Rs 50 crore.
Sugarcane crop in 80,000 acres is being farmed in the Visakhapatnam district. The country jaggery crushers start functioning from Dasara and start production. Jaggery business is good between October and May as most of the festivals like Diwali, Sankranti and weddings season also help the market in good transactions.
Each crusher produces around 25 blocks of jaggery and transports to Anakapalli market forsale. As per the calculations, daily around 50,000 blocks come to the market.
This is the biggest jaggery market and daily around 100 trucks move to Odisha, Chhatti-shgarh and other places of AP and Telangana states.
But due to the downfall in production, jaggery is out of stock in the market and the vendors are sitting with empty hands. Apart from this, crop in thousands of acres has fallen due to the gales and the farmers are losing around Rs 7,000 per acre.
The Transco authorities say it takes one month more to restore the three-phase power supply in the district. If the farmers want to run the crushers, they have to use diesel or some other fuel but it will be a burden to them as they are already in neck deep losses due to the cyclone.
K. Simhachalam, a sugarcane farmer said. “This year, I expected more profit in making jaggery but the cyclone had washed out my dreams. If we run the crushers on diesel it will increase the cost of production.”
