Green chilli seemed like a lucrative alternative for Pema when her hotel and karaoke business closed down due to the COVID-19 pandemic last year. The market for the crop was booming then.
The 36-year-old returned to her village in Langthil Gewog and started growing green chillies on a two-acre land.
Today, when it is time to harvest the crop, its poor price has left Pema, and her husband distressed.
“The yield is as expected; I am worried about the price.”
The current market price for a kilogram of green chillies is Nu 80, five times less than what it fetched two months ago.
“We are not sure whether to pluck the chillies in our garden,” Karma Wangdi, Pema’s husband, added.
Another farmer from Draagteng Gewog who had come to the town to sell her first chilli harvest of the season returned home disappointed.
“Just recently, the price was around Nu 200 for a kilogram,” she recalled.
The vegetable vendors in Trongsa said green chillies are in excess supply, which affected the price. The local market is flooded with green chillies from Paro, Punakha, Thimphu, Tsirang, and WangduePhodrang. One of them said, “The price goes up once in the third and sometime around the eighth and ninth Bhutanese months.”
Meanwhile, back in Langthil, Pema and her husband are in a dilemma.
“We are expecting around 30 sacks of chillies this time.”
But they neither have a facility to store them nor an opportunity to explore other markets. So, for now, settling for the market price seems the most sensible decision.
Passang, Trongsa
Edited by Sonam Wangdi
