Lockdown disrupts onion sales, procurement in Maharashtra

The market committee staff have been assigned to merchants and fee brokers whom farmers can contact in case of want and solely farmers in pressing want of cash find yourself contacting these merchants, she defined.

Wholesale onion gross sales and procurement by the Nationwide Agricultural Cooperative Advertising Federation (Nafed) for the Centre’s buffer inventory has been affected because of the closure of all of the 14 agriculture produce market committees (APMCs) in Nashik district of Maharashtra — a serious onion producing belt within the nation.

Mandis in Nashik have been shut down because of the lockdown and an increase in Covid instances for the reason that final 10 days.

The Lasalgaon Market Committee has ready an in depth plan for farmers to promote their produce on the farm gate underneath its supervision to stop complaints of dishonest.

The try, nevertheless, has not been very profitable with gross sales of barely 1,000 quintals reported within the final 10 days.

Suvarna Jagtap, chairperson, Lasalgaon APMC, identified that farmers haven’t been getting good costs by way of this technique since there isn’t a competitors with different farmers and merchants find yourself quoting low costs. The gross sales haven’t crossed 1,000 quintals, she stated.

The market committee staff have been assigned to merchants and fee brokers whom farmers can contact in case of want and solely farmers in pressing want of cash find yourself contacting these merchants, she defined.

At current, farmers have late kharif and rabi onions in storage. Whereas the previous has a shorter shelf life, the latter, as a consequence of its decrease moisture content material, has an extended shelf life. Principally farmers will retailer their rabi produce, which has been harvested after March in onion or kanda chawls. This saved onions would feed the market until the arrival of the brand new inventory after Diwali.

In the meantime, Nafed, which was to start procurement of round 2 lakh tonne of onion as buffer inventory on the prevailing market fee underneath the Worth Stabilization Fund (PSF), have been discovering it troublesome to acquire onions.

Yogesh Thorat, MD, Maharashtra Farmer Producer Firm (MahaFPC), a federation representing almost 303 farmer producer firms (FPCs) within the state that’s a part of the procurement course of, stated that the companies have managed to acquire round 8000 tonne up to now. FPCs are providing farmers a fee of Rs 16.25 per kg, he stated.

The lockdown has triggered main labour scarcity and closure of markets has hit the tempo of procurement of onion harvested in April-Might, which is to be saved in buffer inventory, he stated.

In Maharashtra, the onion procurement goal is round 1.5 lakh tonne and 1.4 lakh tonnes can be procured by way of farmer producer firms — Maharajya, Pruthashakti Farmer Producer Firm and MahaFPC and the remaining 10,000 tonne by way of Nafed.