The National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) on March 8 announced it will initiate procurement of kharif onion to address the issue of falling prices of onion in Gujarat. Due to lower prices of onion in late kharif season in the state, the Department of Consumer Affairs has directed NAFED to start procurement of onion from three major markets in Gujarat.
NAFED will start procurement of onions from March 9 in Bhavnagar (Mahua), Gondal and Porbandar, according to the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution statement. This move of the government will provide stability to the onion market in the state, it added.
“This intervention has been planned by the government in order to give immediate relief to the farmers from crashing prices of onions in the State. Farmers are requested to bring their good quality and dried stock to the procurement centres to avail of better rate at these centres,” the statement said. Payments to the farmers will be done online, it added.
In the last week of February, NAFED initiated a similar move in Nashik's Lasalgaon region in Maharashtra, which the government said, has resulted in mitigating the distress of the onion farmers of the region.
The crash in onion prices, especially in the past three weeks, has angered several farmers.
Earlier this week, farmers in the Nashik district of Maharashtra resorted to lighting a bonfire of their crops to draw attention to the government's policies and the dire situation faced by growers.
The recent crash in onion prices can be attributed to a combination of factors. Firstly, the rising temperature has led farmers to bring their late Kharif crop to the market.
Kharif and early kharif onions contain high moisture, and an increase in temperature affects the quality of the produce. It leads to rotting or drying up of bulbs resulting into shrivelled bulbs.
However, due to the ongoing heat wave, farmers are worried about the potential damage to their crops and are therefore selling their late Kharif crop alongside the regular kharif crop. This has resulted in an increased supply of onions in the market.
This has led to a massive price crash. Till the first week of February, farmers were getting Rs 10-11/kg. But now, as both Kharif and late kharif crops have hit the market, prices have crashed to Rs 2-4/kg.
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