In a bid to make the state self-reliant in supplying sufficient quantities of onion round the year, the state government has decided to set up four unique onion preservation centres across the state.
This is the first time that such an initiative has been taken that will ensure that there is no damage to crops due to lack of proper storage facilities.
At present, 60 percent of the total onion consumption is produced in the state and the remaining 40 percent needs to be brought in every year from Nasik in Maharastra and Karnataka.
Skyrocketing onion prices had been a common phenomenon across the state in the months before Durga Puja. However, the Mamata Banerjee-government had managed to check the abrupt increase in onion prices in 2016 by ensuring a sharp increase in the production of onions.
Purnendu Basu, the state Agriculture minister, said: "The project has been taken up as preservation of onions is not quite possible in cold storages and the production in the state has also gone up. Thus, setting up of the preservation centres will be of immense help."
After the change of guard in Bengal, the matter of insufficient production of onions had come to the notice of the state Agriculture department and immediate steps were taken to ensure an increase in the production of onions. In the past six years, the state government had managed to ensure the production of 60 percent of the total consumption of the state and now initiatives are being taken to make Bengal self-sufficient in the production of onions.
With a clear roadmap in place on the implementation of modern technology to increase onion production, the state Agriculture department is also taking steps to create infrastructure for proper preservation of onions.
Balagarh in Hooghly is one of the key onion producing regions in the state. Thus, the first attempt to set up an onion preservation centre has been undertaken in Balagarh. According to an official of the Agriculture department, one shouldn't confuse the onion preservation centres with simple cold storages. In the preservation centres, onions can be preserved for three-and-a-half to four months and there would be no chance of the onions rotting, as the centres will have a system of automatic temperature control. At the same time, a unique mechanism will ensure a continuous process of nitrogen fixation by pumping
out carbon dioxide from the preservation centre.
The capacity of the preservation centre in Balagarh will be so huge that all the onions produced in the area can be easily stored there. Similarly, three more onion preservation centres will gradually come up in Burdwan, Bankura and Murshidabad. The places have been identified as sites for the setting up of the preservation centres as a major share of the onion production in the state takes place in these areas.
It may be mentioned that earlier, onion cultivation in the state used to take place only once in winter. But the Agriculture department had taken steps to ensure that onion is cultivated twice a year — once in monsoon and then again in winter.