Bengaluru: With onion prices at their lowest level in calendar year 2018, exporters said the Centre should bring back incentives to ship out more bulbs, to help stabilise prices and provide better returns to farmers. As the harvest of the rabi onion crop gains pace across the key producing regions of Maharashtra and Karnataka, prices have declined drastically, leaving growers in tears.
At Lasalgaon, the largest onion market in the country, prices have crashed by over 80 per cent since early January to their lowest level for the year. At the retail end, onions are being sold at ?10-15 per kg across cities.
Harvested now, the rabi crop, which accounts for 65 per cent of the country’s onion output of around 21 million tonnes, is stored and supplied till the kharif crop is harvested in October. “The crop has been good in all producing regions and that’s influencing prices,” said Jaidutt Holkar, Chairman of the Lasalgaon APMC. He expects prices to stay at these levels for several weeks. Nodal co-operative agency NAFED is expected to begin buying 25,000 tonnes in Lasalgaon this week.
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