LASALGAON, Nov 26: Next time when you have money enough to buy onions, remember Lasalgaon. A dusty town near Nashik, it's the heart of the country's onion territory, where people do very little except breathe, sleep and dream onions. Here, the onion trade goes on uninterrupted. Even when it rains. Because this town has known no other life.Call it smart business sense or the failure of the Government to act when it should have, traders moved in for the kill a long time ago. The first to anticipate what a decline in onion production would result in, traders bought and stored onions in bulk during the last rabi season. The rabi crop, which enters the market after the harvesting in April-May, has a shelf life of almost six months. Very unlike the current kharif produce which rots and reeks within a month.At Lasalgaon, where some 200 traders - of these 35 are the big guns - pick up the onion produce from the wholesale market, an official of the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) said onionssold for Rs 900 per quintal in June this year. This is the time when the rabi season is at its peak. The going rate was no doubt very high if one were to take into account that a quintal cost only Rs 250 in June, 1997. But traders already knew what lay in store. A quintal of onions, the lowly kharif, is today hovering between Rs 1,400-1,700 per quintal at the Lasalgaon market yard.As prices rose, traders and retailers everywhere made a killing. The stored rabi crop earned them rich dividends, touching the Rs 40/kg mark in the retail market. But that was not all. The rabi stocks over, traders and retailers now began to encash the lowly kharif. Bought for Rs 10-12 per kg from the wholesale market, the kharif onions picked up from where the rabi made its exit - the kharif too sold for Rs 40/kg in the retail market.``While the farmer was complaining about the crop being destroyed, the trader was putting to good use his business acumen. Naturally, the trader benefited. The stored stocks made him rich whenprices climbed and now, when the kharif too is selling for Rs 1,600 per quintal in the wholesale market, he stands to gain. After all, people will not stop eating onions. Rabi or kharif, an onion is an onion,'' says an APMC official.``The healthy shelf life of the rabi means nothing to the farmer because he does not store his produce. The trader takes care of that. He has the facility to store. As for the kharif, it is always a problem for the farmer. He has no time to think. He has to let go his produce because the shelf life is so poor. If the harvest is good, the wholesale rate is not very high. If you have a poor crop, the going rate is high. Clearly, onions are a trader's market. He only has to think smart,'' admits the official.In wholesale markets like the one at Lasalgaon, the farmer has to part with almost 10 per cent of the total value auctioned. The commission agent's cut, the handling and weighing charges are the farmer's headache. The trader who picks up the produce has to cough up 12 percent market fees, one per cent supervision charge and also bear the cost of transportation. Once this produce reaches another city, a new lot of wholesalers and retailers enter the picture. At every stage, prices climb and vary from town to town.Onion production may have declined but the market still belongs to the trader. At Lasalgaon, where normally 15,000 quintal of onions arrive everyday, only 4,000 quintal are being brought now. And when traders boycotted the auction last Friday - it was supposed to be their protest over the income tax raids conducted right up to Manmad - the farmer was in a tizzy. He had carted his produce to the market, unaware that there would be no purchaser for a crop he was desperate to sell.APMC officials say the late kharif, which is harvested January onward, is not going to be much of an yield. Unseasonal rains have ensured that. Like the farmers, officials too are banking heavily on the rabi yield in April-May to return a semblance of order to the market. Until then, itis boomtime for the trader with onions of every kind raining money.
