Unseasonal rains in the last one month have impacted onion crops in two key producing states — Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh

Officials told FE that recent rains are expected to result in higher moisture content in onion crops, thus reducing the shelf-life of the kitchen bulb while actual production losses are still to be assessed by the governments.

Rains in April have also caused some damage to grapes, pomegranates, mangoes and vegetables in several districts of Maharashtra including Pune, Ahmednagar, Nashik, Jalgaon and Satara districts and the state government is currently undertaking loss assessment surveys for providing assistance to farmers.

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According to state government officials, moisture content in the rabi onion, which is stored and meets the supplies till October, will be higher because of rains and it would reduce shelf-life from six to four months.

“While moisture content in onion harvest would be higher because of unseasonal rains in the last few weeks, any further rainfall activities could hit productivity,” Balasaheb Misal, former director, Manmard (Maharashtra) mandi board and an onion farmer, told FE.

Currently, the benchmark prices at Lasalgaon, Maharashtra, the hub of the country’s onion trade is Rs 860/quintal which is at the same level as last year.

Rabi onion harvested during April-June accounts for around 65% of the country’s onion production and meets the consumer’s demand till the kharif crop is harvested from October-November.

Kharif harvested onions are not stored because of higher moisture content, thus entering the market directly.

“Continuous rains in the last one month in key producing areas could shrunk shelf-life of onion, resulting in supply constraints around September,” said Uday Devlankar, former adviser to the Maharashtra agriculture prices commission and a farmer.

According to the department of consumer affairs, the modal retail prices of onion have declined to Rs 20/kg on Thursday which was Rs 25/kg three months back. A year ago, modal onion prices were Rs 20/kg.

Meanwhile, the government has decided to purchase 0.3 million tonne (MT) in the current rabi season (2023-24) from the farmers for building buffer stock.

The government had procured 0.25 mt of onion for the buffer stock in 2022-23 against 0.2 mt purchased in the previous year.

The onion stock was procured through farmers’ cooperative Nafed from farmers of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.

Because of unseasonal rains in March this year Nafed had procured around 25,000 tonne of onion harvested in kharif season at a rate around Rs 900/quintal to help farmers due to sharp drop in prices.

In March 2023 retail onion inflation was down 30.87% on year.

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The estimated production of onion during the 2022-23 crop year (July-June) is around 31.8 MT against 31.7 MT reported in the previous year. The output of kitchen bulbs was 26.64 MT in 2020-21.

India is the biggest producer of onion and Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Gujarat have more than 70% share in the country’s production.