Rains, hoarders raise onion prices (Cleared) Rains, hoarders raise

TIRUCHI: When traders across the country made a kill hoarding onions, farmers in Tamil Nadu had little to cheer. Tamil Nadu's onion farmers suffered huge losses due to the incessant rain that damaged the standing crops awaiting harvest during December, a key reason for the skyrocketing onion prices.
In Perambalur, a major onion producer, farmers depended on money lenders to raise the crop again.Representatives of the Domestic and Export Market Intelligence Cell (DEMIC) of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University said Tamil Nadu produced 3.20 lakh tonnes of onion from an area of 0.30 lakh hectare with a productivity of 10.51 tonnes per hectare during 2008-09. More than 80% of this production is constituted by small onions out of the total 77.29 lakh tonnes of onion produced across the country.
Farmers' association as well as traders in Dindigul, the major market for onion, point out that production was cut by almost 80% this year. M Arunachalam of Irur in Perambalur cultivated onion in about ten acres, but managed to reap the bulbs in just 1.25 acres. He stocked a part of the five tonne yield he had harvested while selling the rest to a trader from Palladam for Rs 40 per kg last week. His neighbour Chidambaram is not as lucky. "I cultivated onion in six acres investing about Rs 20,000 per acre. All that I could harvest was damaged and premature bulbs about to rot. Now I have to borrow money to buy seed onion from the market for the next crop,'' he said.
Agriculture department officials say there was drastic fall in the yield, from about ten tonne per hectare to five tonnes and in some cases three tonnes. "But most of the harvested bulbs were premature," said an agriculture department official in Perambalur. Perambalur district leads onion production in the state with 24.6%, followed by Tiruchi with 14.2%, Coimbatore with 13.7%, and Erode with 10.8% of the total cultivated area. In Dindigul wholesale markets that receive onions from Perambalur, Tiruchi, Srivilliputhur, Dharmapuri and Coimbatore the prices hovered around Rs 60 for the prime variety of small onion and Rs 25 for the poor quality that are sold in the retail at Rs 80 per kg. Big onions that were brought from Maharashtra were sold for Rs 60 and Rs 40 for the first and third rate bulbs. "We used to receive about 7000 bags of 75 kg each every day usually. But this season we received just 2000 bags,'' said A P Mahedran, a traders' association functionary.