"No One Came To Buy": Madhya Pradesh Banana Farmers Forced To Destroy Crop

The crisis for banana farmers in Madhya Pradesh's Dhar district has reached a heartbreaking point as they are now being forced to destroy their harvest. 

With market prices crashing so severely that even basic input costs cannot be recovered, months of labour, hope, and investment are collapsing before their eyes. 

Morale is sinking as fast as the prices. The images coming out of Hatnawar village in Dharampuri capture this despair with painful clarity. With no buyers in sight, farmers cultivating bananas on large tracts of land are left with no option but to run tractors over their fully grown plants, uprooting and discarding them. 

For months, farmers in Hatnawar village nurtured their banana fields with hope. Plant by plant, they watched their crop grow, protect it from pests, and prayed for a good price. But when harvest time came, the market turned its face away, and the farmers were left with no option but to destroy their own hard work.

Farmer Yashpal Solanki stands next to what used to be his proud harvest. His voice trembles as he explains, "I planted around 15,000 to 16,000 banana plants... but due to no fair price, I had to uproot and throw 5,000 of them. The crop was ready, but no one came to buy it."

His words carry more pain than anger, the pain of watching the fruits of his toil perish because the market didn't care.

Yashpal's story is not an exception. It is a pattern. Farmer Satyam Darbar, who cultivated bananas on 17 bighas (10.6 acres), shares the same fate. Lakhs of rupees invested, months of effort, and expectations pinned on the harvest all reduced to nothing.

Traders didn't come. Prices offered were so low they felt like humiliation, not compensation.

Hatnawar's farmers say that the loss is not merely financial. It is emotional. It is mental. They had to cut down the plants they had nurtured themselves.

This comes at a time when Chief Minister Mohan Yadav announced a few days back that the government will set up factories to produce textiles from banana crop residues, stems, fibres, and leaves. He said, "We are preparing to set up a textile factory using banana stems, fibres, and leaves. Textiles will be made from banana crop waste."

Madhya Pradesh ranks seventh in the country in banana production. Every year, the state produces nearly 2.5 million metric tons of bananas, over 6.5 per cent of India's total output. Yet, banana farmers continue to remain vulnerable because production is high, but remuneration is uncertain.