By all accounts, 2018 has been a year of deep losses for Maharashtra’s onion growers.
IT HAS been a couple of weeks since Sanjay Balkrishna Sathe, 44, sent Prime Minister Narendra Modi an online money order of Rs 1,064 — the proceeds from the sale of 750 kg of his “top quality” onions at the Niphad marketplace in Nashik, home to half of India’s onion crop. The money order was returned unpaid on December 3, followed by a call from the District Collector’s office regarding his plight. An avid follower of Mann Ki Baat, Sathe says when he felt gutted that his crop would fetch a maximum price of Rs 1.51 per kg, he remembered the Prime Minister once responding to a child’s letter in his radio address.
“I thought perhaps I might get a similar response, too. I wanted to draw attention to the devastation that we are facing in Nashik,” says Sathe. Last week, an onion farmer in Ahmednagar sent Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis the Rs 6 he was left with after deducting transport and labour costs from the proceeds of a large batch of onions. That was just days after two onion growers killed themselves in Nashik district in separate incidents. Across the region, there has been a surge in agitations and petitions to local officials by onion farmers.
By all accounts, 2018 has been a year of deep losses for Maharashtra’s onion growers. Prices that were above the Rs 28-per-kg mark at the start of the year have dipped to below Rs 7 per kg. As farmers destroy their carefully preserved stock that is beginning to spoil, there is no sign of the market improving soon.
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