The National Agricultural Marketing Federation of India (Nafed) has procured around 86,000 tonne of onions from Maharashtra farmers at the prevailing market rate, senior officials of the federation said.
The onion stocks have been procured to create a buffer for the government. This time, the target was to purchase 80,000 tonne from Maharashtra and the federation has overshot it, Nanasaheb Patil, director of NAFED, said. With the target this time to buy 1 lakh tonne from Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, the remaining 20,000 tonne has been equally divided between Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. While Madhya Pradesh has already achieved the target, Gujarat has managed to purchase 3,000 to 4,000 tonne, he said.
Though the target of procuring one lakh tonne onions across the country has been met, the purchase from Maharashtra will continue for some time from Lasalgaon and Pimpalgaon — the two major wholesale onion markets in the country, Patil said. Storage space is still available at Lasalgaon and, therefore, purchase is likely to continue till the first 10 days of August, he said.
Last year, Nafed had purchased 57,000 tonne of onion in the 2018-19 rabi (winter) crop season under the Price Stabilisation Fund (PSF). Onions grown in the rabi season have a long shelf life compared to the crop grown in the Kharif season. The season is almost complete, he said. Last month, Nafed had approached state governments to send their requirements for lean months in advance, to ensure timely allotment of the stored onion in a planned manner to have a salutary effect on retail prices, which tend to go up in the period between August and November
The federation has its own storage facilities in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh and another 30,000 tonne have been added with support from the state governments. This time Maha Farmers Producer Company (MahaFPC), a federation of 303 farmer producer companies in the state, has been successful in keeping its procurement operations under the government Price Support Scheme (PSS) and has crossed Rs 500-crore mark despite the current pandemic. MahaFPC has signed a JV with Nafed called MahaOnion, and also tripartite agreements with 16 farmer producer companies in the state and Nafed to develop a value chain for onion procurement, storage and disposal.
