NASHIK: Onion farmers in Gujarat are crying foul as they are suffering huge losses. The peasants complain that when they reach the market yard with their crops, prices crash and there is no mechanism to support them.
Jitendra Gohil, a farmer of the Mahuva taluka, complained that traders in the market are offering Rs 7.50 to 9 per kilo for onion, whereas the production cost is almost double. Gohil, who had sown onion on five acres land, fears to make loss of about Rs 1 lakh.
“Prices in the domestic market have fallen for two reasons, the late Kharif crop harvest is brought in large quantities in the market- against the demand the supply is very high. The other reason is that this year even Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan are expecting high production, so this time they may import less quantity from Gujarat, that too is creating pressure on price in the Gujarat market,” said Ghanshyam Patel, Chairman of Mahuva Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC).
Maharashtra’s Lasalgaon is known as the onion capital of India, while Mahuva is called the capital of Gujarat in terms of onion production. Farmers of Bhavnagar district sow onion in the highest quantity in the state.
According to the state Agriculture Department’s data, onions were cultivated in the Bhavnagar district on 34,000 hectares in 2020-21, while the area increased in 2021-22 as onion was sown on 34,366 hectares in the district.
Overall cultivation in Gujarat state in 2020-21 was 67,736 hectares which increased to 99,413 hectares in 2021-22.
According to Ghanshyambhai’s rough estimate, Rs 220 is spent on per 20 kilogram production and against that one farmer gets average Rs 150, that means a peasant suffers loss of Rs 70 on per 20 kg production. The average yield per hectare is 25 metric tons of onions, so the per-acre loss comes around Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh per hectare.
As per the Crop Weather Watch Group December’s report, during Kharif season in India, onion was sown on 1.85 lakh hectares, of which 40,000 hectares were affected by heavy or unseasonal rains and other reasons.
In the Rabi season, the sowing target was of 9.52 lakh hectares in India, against that till December 2022 sowing was done on 4.90 lakh hectares. While sowing in Uttar Pradesh was completed, it is going on in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Tamil Nadu.
Bhavnagar APMC market yard trader Manubhai Patel said, “Farmers don’t get right information about the market in advance, if they get cultivation pattern and area, and likely post harvest market forecast, they can decide whether to go ahead with onion crop or not or to switch to other crop and hedge the risk of loss.”
“The other way to bail out farmer is to increase value addition, in 1990’s many onion dehydration plants had come up, but most of them closed down because of non-viability. Now onion paste market is growing, but such plants are not coming up, if installed in the region, to some extent, it can bring relief to farmers, and they can fetch good price or at least meet expenses,” said the trader.