Summary:
Cyclone Taukatae has been harsh on the farmers but the Mango farmers have been severely affected because of the season.
The market unlike previous years isn`t flooded with mangoes and the crop damage is so huge that farmers have been predicted to go back to how the earnings were 25 years ago.
Last year, Covid had affected the sale.
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Until last week, 42-year-old mango farmer Vallabh Patoliya, who owns a 23-bigha orchard in Ankolwadi village in Talala of Gir-Somnath district, was counting the golden eggs he had steadfastly been collecting in his basket over 25 years now.
The calculations, hinged on the hope of getting another good harvest from his orchard this season irrespective of climate changes and unseasonal rains, included marrying off his daughter Trupti this year, and helping his son Prabhat graduate in science in another two years from Rajkot.
But in all this, he had discounted fate, which too, was silently doing its own maths — of throwing the biggest curve ball in the form of Tauktae that left Patoliya’s basket totally ravaged.
In a matter of 20-odd minutes, two and a half decade’s of relentless toil was swept clean on that fateful night of the cyclone.
“I had 300 mango trees, each 20 years old, standing on my farm.
High winds at 150 kmph speed uprooted half of them in front of my eyes.
I was in my orchard when the storm struck and my life’s dreams too got uprooted with my trees,” standing amid the ruins, said Patoliya.
“I started planting mango trees 20 years ago soon after I had passed my Class XII exams.
I had decided to grow Kesar mangoes in my orchard, an investment that I had thought would would pay me off in later years.
Today, I feel as if the cyclone set my clock 25 years back,” said the farmer while his moist eyes scanned the barren vastness that lay yawning in front of him.
He’s not the only one.