Onion growers on Monday stopped auctions at Lasalgaon agricultural produce marketing committee (APMC) yard, Asia’s biggest onion market, complaining that its prices have collapsed by 50 per cent over the past few days. Farmers demanded that they must receive at least ₹30 per kg for their produce.
About 7,980 quintals of the bulb crop came to the Lasalgaon APMC yard. The lowest rate per quintal was ₹500 and the highest rate ₹1,812. The modal rate, the rate at which most trades take place, was ₹1,400 on Monday.
The price was ₹10-12 per kg when the market opened today. The agitated farmers staged a dharna and stopped the auction. “We should get at least ₹30 per kg for onion or else we will agitate against the government. We will stop auctions at other APMCs in the State,” said Bharat Dighole, President of Maharashtra State Onion Growers Association.
He said the production cost of onion is ₹22-25 per kg and farmers are unable to recover production costs.
“The State government must provide a grant of ₹10 per kg to Maharashtra farmers so that they can at least recover production cost,” said Dighole.
Farmers say in the first week of November, the average price of onion in the APMC was ₹2,900 and farmers were getting at least a minimum ₹1,000 for the produce they brought to the market. Over the last few days, onion prices have dropped to ₹500 per quintal and the modal price is at ₹1,400 .
Farmers claimed that the Centre has not fulfilled its promise to help onion farmers. Instead, it brought down rates in the retail market by importing onions. According to Maharashtra farmers, the government purchased onions at a low price from farmers and distributed them in retail markets to lower the price.
Onion prices declined to a five-year low last month on the heels of record high production. The output of the bulb has been estimated at 31.27 million tonnes (mt). However, farmers were encouraged when prices increased at the start of this month as rains in growing areas delayed arrivals.
On November 5, the modal price increased to ₹2,551 a quintal before it began to drop. This decline has now resulted in growers getting restless.