Onion cultivation doubles in four years, farmers’ woes multiply too

NASHIK: An upswing in

onion

prices over the past couple of years has triggered a surge in the area under cultivation of this cash crop in

Nashik

district, a major supplier to Mumbai, Delhi and many parts of north India.


In just four years, the area under onion cultivation in Nashik district has almost doubled. As a result, the production has also gone up by over 100%. The bumper crop, though, has compounded problems for farmers, who are not even able to recover the production cost.

The crop area in Nashik increased from 1.24 lakh hectares in 2013-14 to 2.28 lakh hectares in 2017-18, while onion production doubled from 21.42 lakh tonnes to 46 lakh tonnes.

Almost 80% of the rise in the "onion area" took place in just the past two years. The move towards onion cultivation picked pace after the average wholesale price touched an all-time high of Rs 5,700 per quintal in August 2015.
Onion farmers’ woes multiply in Nashik

Guaranteed profits, farmers quickly expanded. “In 2017, I produced over 450 quintals from four acres. I sold the produce in the range of Rs 1,800 to Rs 2,200 per quintal. Considering the good rates, I doubled the area to eight acres,” said Rajesh Pawar, a farmer from Deola.

Many like Pawar switched to onion with the hope of getting robust returns. Their hopes, however, were dashed with the sharp fall in prices last year. The high production resulted in a glut in the market and the average wholesale price of onions grown last summer crashed to Rs 200 per quintal.

Now farmers are left with huge stockpiles of onions, with many preferring to dump the crop for want of good rates.

Shantaram Gunjal, an onion farmer, said, “I had 300 quintals of summer onions in storage till Diwali but the wholesale prices dipped. I had no choice but to dump the produce in the farm as transporting it would mean additional costs which I could not bear.”