A bumper onion harvest but farmers are shedding tears

Says R P Gupta, Director at Nashik’s National Horticulture Research and Development Foundation: “There was no pest attack, the crop was ideal and the temperature just right when the bulbs were being formed.”

The late kharif crop, planted before Diwali and harvested now, has a low shelf-life. In the absence of processing facilities and storage technology, this means worse news. This is borne out by the sharp increase in arrival of stocks at the Lasalgaon and Pimplegaon mandis. At most, the farmer can hope to dry the onions and add another 20 days of shelf-life.

What’s more, production area is up by at least 5 per cent in Maharashtra. “There was more sowing for late kharif this year as the kharif crop had failed because of untimely rains. This one is a short-duration crop, just 90 days and farmers like it for precisely that reason,” says S Kulkarni, incharge of the NAFED branch in Nashik.

The only way out is to export. But that too has been slow to pick up this year—expected to be 3 lakh MT less than last year. R P Gupta says “the government has to ensure more exports to keep prices under control”.