Maharashtra Slowly Losing its Control in Onion Market

Maharashtra's Lasalgaon is currently experiencing a peculiar onion demand-supply problem from the North as well as South. Abundant production of onion in Madhya Pradesh has crashed the supply in North while good yield in Karnataka has impacted the Lasalgaon's supply to markets down in South. And all this has led to an onion price crash in the entire Maharashtra.

Marketing and Federations Minister for State, Sadhabhau Khot said in 2018, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka received a bumper onion crop so "So the traders from North and South instead of picking onion from Maharashtra, started buying it from MP and Karnataka. The proximity cuts their transport cost resulting into cheaper rates of onion to customers and more profit for local traders. Thus, we have announced the fret subsidy for the cooperative federations of farmers in Maharashtra. These measures will bring in positive change and slowly the market will improve”.

He added that onion growers from Maharashtra who had stored onion for long time in anticipation of higher rates. But now, the fresh onion has also arrived in market and the life of old onion is about to end.

Agriculture expert Vijay Jawandia said that earlier Maharashtra and particularly Nasik onion was well-known and more in demand due to its quality and taste. He said, "But states like Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan are also growing onion now. Their onion may not be as good as the Nasik onion but these states are fairly able to fulfill demands of their region. Conversely, Maharashtra is slowly losing its control in the onion market. Thus, government must understand the market and change the farming pattern to maintain the fair prices in market”.

Jawandia added that "Maharashtra is the biggest producer of onion in the country with a market share of 29%, followed by Karnataka with 22% market share.''