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In spite of a good monsoon and a bumper harvest, onion farmers in Maharashtra are in distress. Their crop is fetching just ₹500-800 a quintal (100 kg), which is not enough even to recover their input costs.
Last August, price was hovering at ₹3,500 a quintal. There has been no intervention from the State or Central Government to arrest the decline in prices.
At Lasalgaon, Asia’s largest onion market, only 7,000 quintals were traded on Thursday. Usually, about 15,000 quintals are traded.
Jaydutt Holkar, Chairman of the Lasalgaon Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC), told BusinessLine that due to a bearish market, farmers are not keen to bring their produce for sale.
On May 31, the Centre had asked the State government for a proposal to help the onion farmers. But till date, it has not been submitted.
Holkar said that when the onion crop was planted a few months ago, the prices were hovering at ₹700-800, and farmers expected them to rise further. Therefore, they also stored some produce from the earlier crop.
“Today, they are in a fix with the onion only fetching ₹5 a kg and the stored onions losing water due to evaporation,” he said.
As with sugarcane, the onion crop goes through a bull-bear phase. But unlike sugarcane, there is no rapid intervention from the government.
Out of touchJagadeesh Sunkad, Chief Technology Officer of Bengaluru-based Villfarm Agrisolutions, said farmers are suffering because policy-makers are going by farm statistics and not looking at issues holistically.
The government should develop a rapid market intervention mechanism for crops such as tomato, potato and onion because these agri-products affect farmers and consumers equally, he said.
“Farmers do not wait for quality produce to grow in the field. They harvest lower-grade onions and start selling them in the market, which leads to a slump in the price,” said Sunkad.
“Good quality onions are stored and sold at a later date, which affects the market. Therefore, farmers should be motivated to produce a quality onion crop, which will help them get good prices,” he added.
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