With garlic and onion prices plummeting to as low as 50 paise per kg in Madhya Pradesh, farmers are being forced to dump their produce. They have also renewed the demand for minimum support price (MSP) guarantee for the crops.
Last week, a number of videos showing farmers dumping garlic in rivers, taking out mock funeral procession of the crops or setting them on fire, were doing the rounds on social media.
Agriculture economist and researcher Devinder Sharma took up the issue on Twitter, sharing news clipping about the low prices. “For the past week, such deeply distressing reports of sale of onion and garlic have poured in from Madhya Pradesh. This will continue to happen unless farm produce, like industrial products, too comes with a price tag.” He used the hashtag ‘MSP’ in his tweet.
In the Mandsaur 'mandi' (agriculture produce market) - the biggest garlic market in the country - farmers were being offered maximum Rs 6,665 per quintal (100 kg) to minimum Rs 100 per quintal (Re 1 per kg) last week, causing a lot of resentment among the farmers. In some other markets, the prices plummeted to 45-50 paise per kg. Similarly, onion farmers were offered maximum Rs 1,244 and minimum Rs 50 per quintal.
Dilip Patidar, a farmer in Mandsaur, said that the condition of the farmers is such that they are not even able to get the production cost for garlic and onion crops. He said that the Bhavantar scheme (to bridge the gap between production and selling prices) was launched in the state but was not working now. The farmers have been agitating for MSP since 2017 and six farmers were killed during an agitation, but the demands remain unfulfilled.
Madhya Pradesh is among the largest producers of garlic in the country, with the production almost doubling to 19.83 lakh metric tonnes in 2020-21 from 11.50 lakh metric tonnes in 2011-12, as per the data of MP Economic Survey. It is mainly grown in the Malwa-Nimad region of the state.
In the absence of any government scheme cushion, farmers are forced to either sell their produce at these extremely low prices when the prices plummet due to low demand, or risk the low-shelf life crops being rotten. Farmers face a similar situation every few years depending on the production-and-demand scenario, but no corrective steps have been taken.
In a review meeting in May this year, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had highlighted that garlic has been selected under the ‘one district one product’ scheme of the state government. He had said that there was an opportunity for the state to undertake exports even in the international market. There should be efforts in the direction of making the Mandsaur garlic a global brand, he had said, adding that modern technologies should be used for processing of garlic.
Opposition Congress has taken up the issue, with MP party chief Kamal Nath sharing a video of farmers dumping garlic in rivers and urging the state government to take immediate steps to provide relief to the farmers. He said that the Shivraj (Singh Chouhan) government in the state has been promising to double the income of the farmers, but is not even able to provide them fair price from their products, thus putting the farmers under the burden of loans.
Former CM Digvijaya Singh wrote a letter to Chouhan, detailing the issue of the low prices of garlic and onion and expressing surprise that the state government has not even expressed sympathy with the farmers, let alone take any corrective steps. In the letter, Singh said that it was the duty of the chief minister to hold discussions with the farmers and take steps to ensure fair price of their crops. “If you do not hear out the problems of the farmers of Nimad and Malwa will never forgive you,” Singh said.
THE WEEK tried to reach out to minister of state (independent charge) for horticulture and food processing, Bharat Singh Kushwah, but in vain.
‘Both short term and long term measures necessary’
State president of the farmers’ cell of MP Congress, Kedar Shankar Sirohi told THE WEEK that the government should be initiating both short-term and long-term measures to mitigate the crisis. As a short-term measure, some tool to incentivise the farmers so that their losses are minimised should be taken, while as long-term strategy there should be proper plan in place to ensure market guarantee for horticulture crops like garlic and onion. These include deciding MSP for the crops, ensuring storage facilities and facilities for value addition, including processing of the crop.
Sirohi said that this year there was even a no-crop insurance offered on the horticulture crops in MP. He said that the government was under huge debts and had no money to offer any respite to the farmers and, therefore, it is keeping silent.
Giving reasons for the price crisis, Sirohi said that the garlic and onion crops have a high production cost - up to Rs 1 lakh per acre - and the production is up to 20 quintals of garlic and 40 quintals of onion per acre. If the demand in domestic and international markets is low, then the purchase price of the crops plummet. This year, the price dip has been spurred especially by low overseas demand for garlic paste. The biggest brunt is borne by the small and marginal farmers who invest a lot in the crop in hope of good profit, Sirohi said.
