With export of oranges squeezed, farmers pin their hope on pulp

with agency inputs

In the baking-hot fields of central India around Nagpur, onion has hit orange hard in a mini-trade war whose battle lines were drawn thousands of miles away. Caught in the crossfire, cotton too has become a casualty.

Thousands of farmers in Vidarbha region, famous for its oranges, are sitting on a surplus of the fruit, unable to sell it in its main export market, Bangladesh, because of a complex web of conflicting foreign trade policies, market forces and international trade dependencies.

Orange growers used to send 6,000 tonnes of the fruit daily to Bangladesh until last year, but that trade reduced to a trickle after Dhaka increased its import duty on oranges from Rs 20 per kilogram in 2019 to Rs 88 per kilogram in November 2023. This raised the price of oranges in Bangladesh, making it uneconomical for local traders to buy from India.

"We barely send 100 tonnes or five truckloads of oranges per day now," Manoj Jawanjal, president of the Nagpuri Santra Farmers Producer Company said , as he walked through rows of orange trees in his orchard, about 60 kilometres west of Nagpur.

Farmers in Vidarbha believe that Bangladesh increased the import duty in retaliation after India banned the export of onion, a staple of local cuisine, to protect the domestic market. The ripple effect showed how intricately linked is global trade, where one action can impact tens of thousands of lives across a continent.

Late last month, the government relaxed the export ban on onions, which was imposed in December last year, allowing its shipments to Bangladesh, UAE, Bhutan, Bahrain, Mauritius and Sri Lanka. It is not clear if onion exports, particularly to Bangladesh, will lead to its government reducing the import tax on oranges.

If it does, farmers from Maharashtra, the largest producer of oranges in the country, will get some relief for the next harvest in December.