Newsroom, December 02, 2025: YSR Congress Party president and former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy lambasted the current government on Sunday for allowing banana prices to crash to 50 paise per kilogram—a rate lower than a matchbox or biscuit packet leaving growers to absorb devastating losses after months of investment and toil.
In a sharply worded post on X, Reddy highlighted the plight of Rayalaseema farmers, who have sunk lakhs of rupees into cultivation only to see their harvest undervalued, extending the crisis to onions and tomatoes where no crop fetches fair returns.
"If food is sold at 50 paise per kilo, what is the value of the labour that produces that food?" he asked, demanding urgent intervention to stem the "biggest blow" to the agrarian economy.
Reddy contrasted the situation with his own tenure, when bananas averaged Rs 25,000 per tonne, crediting special trains to Delhi and statewide cold storage facilities that saved lakhs of families from ruin. He accused the Chandrababu Naidu-led administration of abandoning promises like free crop insurance, input subsidies, and disaster aid, calling them "deception" that has pushed agriculture toward collapse.
"Today, agriculture is collapsing and farmers are drowning in losses, while the government watches silently," Reddy wrote, framing the issue as a failure of governance rather than market forces.
