Govt mulls minimum support price to prevent onion tears

The move is seen as a step to give relief to onion farmers who are left with no option but to sell their produce at a throwaway price at the time of the bumper crop season.

“The plan is to fix an MSP of onion on the lines of other crops such as pulses, paddy, wheat, etc. The objective of the proposed mechanism is to safeguard onion farmers from price crash and that of the consumers when prices spiral,” a government source said, adding that in the absence of any such provision both the farmers and consumers suffered.

“The Centre would use Price Stabilisation Fund to provide financial support to states in meeting the goal. The fund would also be used to procure onion for government stock so that it would not get wasted and the essential commodity would be made available to consumers during the peak season when the demand is high” the source said.

A decision in this regard was taken during a high-level meeting convened by Union Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari with the agriculture and cooperatives department of Maharashtra, the main onion producing state, in the presence of Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh and Union Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan. At the meeting, it was decided that the state government would send a proposal to fix the MSP of onion, which would be expedited by the Centre.

“The process is at an initial stage as the Centre has initiated the process with Maharashtra first and after formulating the final guidelines on it, the same would be replicated in other states too,” the source said.  Leaders of Maharashtra present in the meeting were Agriculture Minister Bhausaheb Fundkar, Cooperatives Minister Subhash Deshmukh, Animal Husbandry Minister Mahadev Jankar and MoS Agriculture Sadabhau Khot.

Millennium Post was the first to report that the Centre despite assurances in the past was yet to initiate procurement of the essential commodity, which had toppled several governments in the past. 

Soon after the report, two BJP parliamentarians – Sumedhananda Saraswati and Hukum Singh – had flayed the Centre for not doing enough to address the plight of onion farmers.