Vittal Chanappa Gowda, a small farmer from Nandihal near Ramdug in Karnataka’s Belgaum district, spent ₹1,000 to produce a sack of onion earlier this year. “But I am getting a mere ₹250 for each bag (of 60-kg),” he says.
Standing in the dusty Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee yard in Hubli, where he had brought 40 bags to sell, Gowda laments: “Forget profits, I won’t be able to recover the costs that I have incurred in harvesting onion.”
Prices in Hubli are currently ruling at ₹800 a quintal against ₹1,250 during the same time last year. In Maharashtra’s Lasalgaon, which decides prices across the country, onion is currently quoting below ₹1,500 a quintal against over ₹3,000 last year.
Following protests, the Karnataka Government announced a relief of ₹9,000 per hectare, which farmers say is not enough to cover even their cultivation costs. Lured by last year’s high returns, farmers in Karnataka brought more land under onion this kharif season. Also, the delayed monsoon aided higher acreage.
Unable to take up the sowing of pulses such as green gram on time due to the delay in monsoon, farmers in the State went in for onion. The acreage is estimated to have increased by 30-35 per cent to around 1.5 lakh hectares. Production is estimated at 1.5 million tonnes.
“We paid almost twice the price for seeds, used the best of inputs and took utmost care of the crop anticipating that prices this year would be as good as last year,” said Mallappa Barker another farmer.
Unseasonal rains But the unseasonal rains belied the growers’ expectations.
Onion brought to the North Karnataka markets has high moisture content and is not preferred by buyers from other States such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Traders say onion with high moisture gets damaged faster when being transported to far-off places. This is also influencing the prices. Expressing disappointment over their plight, Gowda, in his mid-fifties, says prices of almost every input – fertiliser, seed, diesel, labour, packing and transportation costs – have all gone up in recent years, while prices for many agricultural produce have been plunged. Restrictions imposed on exports of onions are putting pressure on prices.
“The Government should ease the curbs on exports of onions by bringing down the minimum export price (MEP) further,” said Prakash TN Kammaradi, Chairman of the Karnataka Agriculture Price Commission (KAPC).
In August, the Centre had reduced the MEP to $350 a tonne from $500 in July. Also, the Government needs to create a “green track” for channelising exports quickly, Kammaradi said.
Onions produced in Karnataka hold the key in maintaining domestic supplies as they arrive in the market between Maharashtra’s rabi and kharif crops, which is normally harvested in November-December.
“Onion harvest in Karnataka coincides with the arrival of North East Monsoon, which is a big challenge to growers in the State,” Kammaradi said.
There is a need to develop cropping pattern to help growers overcome this challenge. Also, he felt that technologies such as solar driers need to be made available to growers at an affordable cost. KAPC has suggested that the State prevail upon the Centre to come up with a national policy on onion to deal with the related issues.
Viability issue Meanwhile, exporters say that exports are not viable currently as the price is still higher than those quoted by Pakistan or China. Also, the current produce is not export worthy, said CB Holkar, former NAFED director and an exporter. “We will have to wait for the Maharasthra crop. It has been delayed and will start arriving from December,” he said.