Panjab’s Tomato Potential Untapped; Farmers Find Success in Diverse Crops

Despite Panjab having enough tomato acreage to produce the paste needed for its ketchup factories, most of these plants, including Hindustan Unilever Limited’s Kissan brand in Patiala, continue to procure large quantities from states like Maharashtra. According to CM Bhagwant Singh Mann, these factories need 10K metric tonnes (MT) of tomato paste annually, but only 500 MT is currently sourced from Panjab. Experts say the real barrier is not tomato varieties or acreage but the narrow 35-40-day harvest window when Panjab’s tomatoes reach ideal processability—high total soluble solids and dark red color—plus insufficient local processing capacity. While farmers grow processable varieties such as Punjab Ratta (Red), they lack enough modern facilities to convert their tomatoes into fine paste. Public-sector plants run by Punjab Agro in Abohar and Hoshiarpur cannot handle the 10K MT demand and need technical upgrades. Farmers have also complained of poor management and delayed payments at these state-run plants, driving them to sell elsewhere at marginally better rates. Meanwhile, farmers in Panjab’s Ferozepur district have found success and higher earnings by shifting to unconventional crops, including lotus, strawberries, taro, chillies, and dragon fruit, thereby reducing their reliance on wheat, rice, and cotton, and subsequent stubble-burning practices. Avtar Singh of Kunde village cultivates lotus on 10 acres of waterlogged land, making around USD 2.4K per acre from stems and an additional USD 409 from seeds, inspiring others to convert roughly 250 acres to lotus farming. In Patiala, tech entrepreneur-turned-farmer Mantaj Singh Sidhu left his lucrative Google job in Dublin, Ireland to launch Gill Organics. Sidhu leases small patches of farmland—charging subscribers USD 350-410 for six months—and cultivates vegetables through natural farming.