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Fair price to guarantee onion self-sufficiency

Say farmers, agriculturists and traders

Sohel Parvez
Bangladesh has to rely on foreign onions as local farmers do not want to expand its cultivation amid fears of losses due to low prices during the peak harvesting seasons, said farmers, agriculturists and traders.
Acreage of the crop has hovered between 4.19 lakh and 4.59 lakh acres since 2014-15, according to data of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).
And annual onion production has remained steady at 17-18 lakh tonnes for four years to fiscal 2018-19, against the demand of 24 lakh tonnes, creating a demand for the imported variety.
The country imports 10-11 lakh tonnes onion to cover the shortfall, which also results from post-harvest losses.
"Despite the scope, we are shy of increasing the cultivation of onion because of the worries over low prices and losses," said Saifiil Islam, a farmer of Sujanagar in Pabna, one of the major onion producing districts.
He said over phone yesterday that farmers suffered losses as they had to sell the produce for Tk 15 and Tk 18 a kilogram last year, much below the production cost ofTk 22-Tk 24.
The price at the farmers' level
dropped to Tk 12-Tk 15 a kg during this year's harvesting season in March-April, he added.
"Farmers will expand cultivation if fair prices are ensured," Islam said.
The 48-year-old farmer grew onion on two acres of land last season.
Consumers were compelled to pay more than Tk 240 for a kg of onion because of a supply shortage resulting from a slump in imports and declining stock of the locally grown ones.
The prices have shot up after India banned exports in the end of September this year.
Shailendra Nath Mozumder, principal scientific officer at the Spice Research Centre in Bogura under the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, said there are improved varieties of onions.
"And there is scope to increase cultivation area. Growers will be
interested to cultivate onion if they get fair prices," said Mozumder, also the project director of the Strengthening of Spice Crop Research in Bangladesh.
Farmers and agronomists said farmers will begin harvesting the early varieties from December and the main crop will arrive in April-May.
During the period, the bulb's prices usually fall thanks to the ample supply of the domestic and imported varieties, putting farmers in trouble.
Islam said 90 percent of the small and medium growers sell their produce during the peak harvesting season and low prices discourage them to increase the acreage.
BBS data showed farmers cultivated the bulb on less than 2.91 lakh acres and bagged 8.72 lakh tonnes in fiscal 2009-10. Since then, both acreage and production of onion rose.
Md Abdul Muyeed, director general of the Department of Agricultural Extension, said cultivation of onion and its production will increase if imports are discouraged during the harvesting season. "And we will gradually become self-sufficient in onion," he said.
"This is true for any crop. When farmers make profit for a crop, they will grow it more."
Muyeed said the agriculture ministry has taken a scheme to provide seeds and fertiliser for free to 7,700 farmers in order to motivate them to grow onions on one bigha of land this year.
Contacted, Agriculture Secretary Md Nasiruzzaman said the ministry aims to gradually attain self-sufficiency in the crops that the country has to import to meet domestic demand.
He said the agriculture ministry would write to the commerce ministry soon to discourage imports of crops during harvesting seasons.
The government should slap import duty in a way that makes foreign purchase
expensive and farmers getTk 30 per kg, said Islam.
Nazneen Ahmed, senior research fellow of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, said the government should start monitoring the trend of opening of letters of credit and forecast possible production of the bulb in the coming season, and take step accordingly.
Experts say there should be specialised storage for onions as it would help farmers store the crop for a longer period and avoid post-harvest losses. Specialised cold storages can help reduce the post-harvest loss by 10 to 15 percent, Mozumder said.
The cultivation of summer onion varieties should also be promoted as they could be grown round the year, give higher yield and mature in a shorter period than the winter onions.
The seed production for the summer varieties has to be increased, he said.