'I was expecting to earn more than 100,000 rupees from a one-acre plot of tomatoes.

Some farmers like Yogesh Patil from Sangli district of Maharashtra were hit so badly that they don't have money to buy seeds and fertilizers to plant summer-sown crops such as corn and soybean. Lockdowns imposed by authorities trying to contain the surge added to the pain, but at least the monsoon season, which began this month, is forecast to deliver normal rainfall. Such accounts have become commonplace among rural communities in the vast Indian hinterland in the wake of a devastating second wave of infections that peaked in the past two months. We will repay the debt in two to three years, but the personal loss can never be compensated.'

'We lost our father and incurred debt as well. It not only exhausted our savings but also forced us to borrow from relatives,' said the farmer, who also caught the virus when it ripped through his family.

'We can't think about any big ticket purchases this year,' Bagal said as he irrigated the fields in the farm below the mountains of the Western Ghats. They had hoped to buy a tractor for the small farm in western Maharashtra state, but the brothers spent all their savings on hospital treatment for their father and three other family members who survived. Satara, INDIA, June 18 (Reuters) - Having watched his father’s funeral pyre burn by a river bank close to their farm last month, Indian sugarcane grower Dattatray Bagal and his brothers had to set aside grief to count the financial cost of the coronavirus’s impact on their family.

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