50 paise a kg: Onion price crash leaves Maharashtra farmers in throes of debt

The numbers are stark. Solanke invested over Rs 1 lakh this season – money borrowed from a local moneylender. His entire harvest of roughly 100 quintals, much of it damaged by unseasonal rain, earned him Rs 15,000. He is now staring at an unpaid debt of Rs 85,000 – principal and mounting interest.

Nashik farmer Jitendra Solanke shows the receipt for onions sold at 50 paise per kg in Satana APMC.

What makes his situation particularly bitter is the timing. Just six days earlier, on May 2, onions from the same field fetched Rs 3.50 per kg. “The government must step in and fix a rate of at least Rs 20 per kg. How are we supposed to survive otherwise? If this goes on, farmer suicides will keep rising,” Solanke said.

A Re 1 invoice

While Solanke’s ordeal reflects the broader distress across Maharashtra’s onion belt, it was a crumpled payment invoice from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar that captured the crisis most viscerally – and went viral on social media.

Prakash Galadhar, 45, a farmer from Varudi village in Paithan taluka, carried 25 sacks of onions – totalling 1,262 kg – to the Paithan APMC on May 3. After the auction, his total earnings came to Rs 1,262. That’s Re 1 per kilogram.

But the actual blow came after deductions. Transport, weighing, storage, and handling charges wiped out even that meagre amount – and Galadhar was told he owed the trader Re 1 more than he had earned.

“I sold around 12 quintals and got a rate of Re 1/ kg. Once they subtracted all the charges, I was left with nothing — in fact, I had a due of Re 1 to pay back,” Galadhar said. “I threw away the remaining stock. There was no point bringing it in.”

The receipt – showing a net payable of Re 1 by a farmer to the trader who had toiled through a full season – spread rapidly across WhatsApp groups and Instagram, becoming a symbol of just how broken the economics of onion farming have become.

Galadhar’s troubles do not end in the fields. A couple of years ago, he married off his daughter, and the financial strain of that occasion still lingers. “I still owe over Rs 5 lakh to lenders. This onion crisis has left me completely shattered,” he said.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Ibrahim Bagwan, a trader at the Paithan APMC, who purchased Galadhar’s harvest, pointed to two compounding factors. “Onion arrivals have surged in Karnataka, Telangana, and other states. That’s why local supply, which used to be sold there, is now taken to APMCs within Maharashtra, so oversupply, and it has driven prices down,” he said. “Galadhar’s produce was also of below-average quality, which affected what it could fetch. Better-quality onions in the same market are currently getting Rs 7 to Rs 10 per kg.”

Damaged harvests & a war abroad

Traders say the price crash is the result of several forces converging at once. Shivam Dhumal, owner of Agro Indi Exim Pvt Ltd and a trader at Pune’s Gultekdi wholesale market, explained that the unseasonal rain across Maharashtra has hurt the shelf life of the current stock. “Quality has taken a hit, which is why prices are low. In the Gultekdi market right now, wholesale rates range between Rs 5 and Rs 12 per kg depending on quality,” he said.

He also pointed to the impact of the ongoing conflict in West Asia on export demand. “With exports down, domestic supply has gone up. But prices should recover – we’re expecting rates to cross Rs 20-25 per kg by June, and potentially Rs 35-40 around Diwali,” Dhumal added.

What farmers’ representatives are demanding

Bharat Dighole, president of the Maharashtra State Onion Growers’ Association, has written to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis seeking immediate intervention.

“We have asked the government to provide a subsidy of Rs 1,500 per quintal as a short-term relief measure. We also demand that the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (Nafed) and National Cooperative Consumers’ Federation of India Limited (NCCF) begin procurement. They should purchase only from APMC mandis, so it can omit proxies, and the benefit actually reaches the farmer,” Dighole said.

On structural reform, he said, “Given the rising cost of inputs – fertilisers, seeds, labour, irrigation, storage, transport – the minimum floor price for onion procurement must be fixed at Rs 3,000 per quintal (Rs 30 per kg). Without that kind of protection, farmers will remain at the mercy of the market every single season.”

NCP (SP) MP Supriya Sule also weighed in, calling on the state government to act. “It is deeply disheartening that farmers – most of them marginal landholders who work incredibly hard – are being paid just Rs 1 per kilo. They deserve justice. The government must intervene and focus on the efficient implementation of the beneficiary schemes,” she said.