Maharashtra government to appeal its farmers to get more onions to market

PUNE: In order to control spiralling onion prices, Maharashtra government has decided to appeal farmers and traders to not do hold on the the onion stocks. The central government has decided to re-impose minimum export prices ( MEP) to control rising onion prices.

The state government said it found very few stocks with the traders. "We carried out inspection of over 200 traders during last 15 days. All of them had stocks enough only for one or two days," said Milind Akre, deputy general manager, Maharashtra State Agricultural Marketing Board.

"There is about 3.3 lakh quintal stock with the farmers. We will tell the farmers and traders at Lasalgaon and Pimpalgaon that the current prices at Rs 40/kg are already very good. If the prices become higher than Rs 40/kg then the central government may impose a ban, in which case, the farmers will not get even the existing price," said an official who attended the meeting.

However, doubts have been expressed about how much the appeal of the state government would help in controlling the prices. "The government has no right to tell farmers how he should do his business. The government did not help farmers when the onions were rotting in their stores due to ban on exports and they had to sell it at Rs 2/kg," said Changdev Holkar, director, National Federation of Agricultural Marketing (Nafed).