It’s time for Sambhar without tur dal!

KALABURAGI: Is your Sambhar looking more like a watery soup nowadays? Don’t blame it on the cook at home or at the hotel, it’s all because tur dal prices have gone through the roof. Households have started to feel the pinch with the prices of pulses sky-rocketing due to a shortfall in production caused by poor rains.

The prices have gone up by as much as 40 to 50 per cent in retail markets in the last one year due to adverse weather conditions in the entire north Karnataka region which is a major centre for crops like tur dal.

Kalaburagi, Yadgir and Bidar account for a huge chunk of pulses like green gram, black gram (urad) and red gram (tur dal). Hailed as the ‘Tur Bowl’ of Karnataka till last year, Kalaburagi district with over 200 dal mills accounted for a lion’s share of tur dal production in the state.

However, since last year, red gram cultivation as well as production have come down drastically in these districts with a large number of farmers switching to cotton cultivation in view of the absence of good, remunerative prices for their produce.

Now, in view of poor returns from cotton and the steep rise in the prices of red gram due to low production last year, farmers   of the region have made up their mind to switch to red gram cultivation.
Besides, Red gram which was sold at Rs 4,500 per quintal last year is now being sold at Rs 8,000-8500 per quintal.

The failure of the rains has also hit the sowing of short duration cash crops (which are also pulses) such as green gram, black gram grown especially in these two districts of the state. Expecting a good monsoon the agriculture department had fixed a production target of 3.75 lakh tonnes of red gram for the current year covering an area of 3.56 lakh hectares.

“But in view of poor monsoon, the coverage is only about 25 per cent of the target area and most of this crop is already withering now. We may reach 20-30 per cent of the production”, Mr Basavaraj Ingin, President of Tur Dal Growers’ Association said.