Ramesh Patel did not abandon his mango orchard in Gujarat because he wanted to. He abandoned it because he had no choice. The heat was too intense for pesticides to work. The fog ruined the flowering season. And when the fruit finally grew, the price he was offered at the market did not cover his transport costs. “Every year, it gets worse,” he said.
India is the largest mango producer in the world. The country grows over 18 million tons of mangoes every year — more than one third of the world’s total production. It is the king of fruits, the pride of summer, the backbone of millions of farming families across Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh. And in 2025, that backbone bent close to breaking.
A Bumper Harvest That Broke Farmers
In Chittoor, Tirupati, and Annamayya districts of Andhra Pradesh, farmers grew more mangoes than ever before. This year’s production reached nearly 1.5 lakh tonnes, compared to last year’s 90,000 tonnes — leading to an oversupply crisis and a dramatic collapse in market demand.
The pulp industry, which buys the bulk of Totapuri mangoes, simply stopped buying. Exports, which normally account for 40% of processed pulp, fell by nearly 70% due to surging freight charges and disruptions to the Suez Canal shipping route caused by Middle East conflicts. On top of that, the central government imposed a 28% GST on ready-to-serve drinks containing over 10% pulp content — discouraging beverage companies from using higher pulp concentrations and cutting domestic demand further.
Small farmers, with no access to cold storage, were forced to sell within two to three days of harvest. Pulp factories rejected overripe fruit. Farmers dumped mangoes on roadsides rather than pay transport costs to carry unsellable produce to market.
“Farmers don’t want political entanglements,” said Bhanu Prakash, a mango farmer from Tirupati. “They want genuine solutions to protect their livelihoods.”
Climate Is Making It Worse
The market crisis sits on top of a deeper, slower crisis of climate. Mango farmers in Gujarat reported up to a 70% drop in production in 2025, blaming a combination of severe weather and rising air pollution. Heavy fog disrupted flowering. Intense summer heat dried out pesticides before they could take effect.
In Chittoor, a single flowering cycle was reported across most orchards due to weather instability — reducing variability in harvest timing and putting enormous pressure on pulp factories and market infrastructure all at once. Farmers who once spread their harvest across weeks now had to sell everything in days.
The Infrastructure Nobody Built
Behind both crises — market and climate — lies a third failure that has been decades in the making: the absence of basic post-harvest infrastructure.
Up to 15% of India’s fruits and vegetables are lost post-harvest due to poor infrastructure. Many small farmers cannot afford cold storage or refrigeration along the supply chain. India wastes nearly 80 million tonnes of food at the retail and consumer level — second only to China.
Mango is perishable. It ripens fast, rots faster, and demands either immediate sale or immediate cold storage. Most small farmers have neither. Price volatility and supply disruptions remain severe because there are no long-term contractual arrangements and farmers depend on unorganised networks with no price guarantees.
The Andhra Pradesh government eventually stepped in, issuing an order to procure 6.5 lakh tonnes of Totapuri mangoes at ₹4 per kilogram. Farmers said the support price came too late and too low. By then, much of the fruit had already rotted.
India grows more mangoes than any country on earth. The farmers who grow them are still waiting for a system that treats that fact as something worth protecting.
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