New Delhi: Last August, onions were selling at a higher price than apples in Delhi. But now, wholesale prices of onion have plunged to ₹ 5-7 per kg and the pungent bulb is retailing at ₹ 25 per kg.

Consumers may be happy but farmers are in tears as they are selling at a loss of around ₹ 5 per kg.

Retail prices had touched ₹ 80 a kg in Delhi in August. But as it was a lean period--supplies were only a trickle in wholesale markets—traders, not farmers, reaped a windfall.

Now there is neither noise nor news when a farmer sells at a loss, said Vijay Jawandhia, a farm activist from the largest onion growing state of Maharashtra.

“And the government is more sensitive to the plight of the consumer going to the extent of putting in export controls," he adds.

Phanindranath Ahire, an onion farmer from Nashik in Maharashtra, explains the dip in prices. Farmers planted more area under onions and the late Kharif crop cannot be stored. “And so more onions will land up (at the benchmark Lasalgaon mandi) once the winter (Rabi) crop arrives and prices might dip further."

In his home district, Ahire said, farmers are grazing cattle across their methi (fenugreek) fields as a basket of greens (500 grams) is selling for ₹ 1 in the wholesale market. “Harvesting the crop and taking it to the wholesale market costs more. Letting loose cattle is easier."

There’s more: potato prices in wholesale markets of Agra and Aligarh—in the largest potato growing state of Uttar Pradesh—have dipped to less than ₹ 3.5 a kg.

As more farmers begin harvesting their crop by next month, prices will fall to less than ₹ 2 per kg, said Rumal Singh, a farmer from Mathura. “We have lost hope. Be it wheat or potato, farming has become a route to disaster," he adds.

Last year, after the warehouses were full to the brim with potatoes, farmers had no choice and left the potato crops to rot in fields. This year is unlikely to be any different, Singh said.

Where is the price stabilisation fund the centre constituted last year? The ₹ 500-crore fund is meant to control price of perishable horticultural produce like onions and potatoes.

It was used to buy onion and potatoes—in limited quantities—earlier, and to import pulses when prices shot up a few months back. But the corpus of the fund speaks volumes on the priority government accords to keeping farm gate prices remunerative.

The politics is clear too: the government is sensitive to consumer sentiment and will use the price stabilization fund to bring down prices of onions and potatoes, but seldom aid the farmer.

Despite changing realities—horticulture production outstripped foodgrains production for the third straight year in 2014-15—price support operations remain limited to rice and wheat, and at times for crops like cotton.

The structure of farming has changed, the legacy of farm support hasn’t.

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