Onion prices bring tears to farmers

Anantapur: Lack of storage facilities and steep fall in prices are forcing farmers to throw away onions or leave them in the field without harvesting.

Their vulnerability was visible at Kurnool, a big market in the region for onions, where quality onion was not crossing the Rs 300-mark for a quintal.

Poor quality of onions saw them auctioned at Rs 100 a ton. With no minimum support price, farmers are incurring huge loss. At V. Kothapalli village in Yadiki mandal in Anantapur, farmers left the crop in the field without harvesting.

“As already a ton of onions was not crossing even Rs 300 in the market yards, harvesting and transportation to the market was bound to be additional burden. So we left the crop without further steps,” farmer, Narayana Reddy said emphasising the need for minimum support price.

The system of offering minimum support price of '700 a quintal was confined to limited quantity every day. After the limit is crossed, the marketing department does not purchase onions and farmers have to depend on traders at the open auction.

Kurnool market yard has been witnessing a panic situation for the past two weeks despite ministers announcing purchase at Rs 700 a quintal.

K. Mohan of Joharapuram in Kurnool district said that he had sown onion crop in three acres investing Rs 1.50 lakh. “But, steep fall in prices caused a huge loss for me,” he said.

CPI state secretary, K.Ramakrishna stressed the need to improve market and storage facilities including, offering attractive prices to the farmers.

“This situation is repeated every season, but governments failed to find a permanent solution,” he alleged.