As consumer organisations and the media turned their attention away from the onion price graph, cost of the bulbuous vegetable shot up steeply again in markets across the state.
Traders in the growing areas—Hubli, Bijapur and Ajjampur in Chikmagalur—said the price hike indicated that stocks of the old crop were depleted, while there was little inflow and the new crop that was being released to the market was being quoted at higher prices. “The price hike is showing tendencies of shooting through the roof,” an onion trader said.
“We have had no supplies from Maharashtra ever since the beginning of the south-westerly monsoon. Due to heavy rains, crops have suffered. The next new crop is expected to enter the market only by end of November, but the question that is worrying the traders is how to sustain the supplies till then,” said Asif Iqbal, one of the leading onion traders in Mangalore.
Over the last two weeks, prices of old crop had remained at peak at Rs55-58 per kg at the consumer end, while the prices of the new crop has started to rise from Rs48 last week to reach a peak of Rs56 to the consumer on Saturday.
Shafeeq Ahmed, main dealer for onions at the Yeshwanthpur RMC yard in Bangalore, told dna that Bangalore consumed 60,000 kg of onions a day, next only to Hyderabad in the South to consume that quantity. “In the past, the quality of onions was good and we could sustain the stocks for at least a week, but now onions have become one of the commodities that been listed as ‘quickly perishable’ item, so it is wrong to say that traders are hoarding.”
The price mechanism of onions is fully dependent on the classical demand-and-supply theory more than any other commodity due to its utility to the consumer. “It’s a commodity that cannot be subjected to artificial scarcity by market operators and definitely not for forward trading. You know the proverbial rotten onion stench can stun a horse. The stock should move from the fields to the yard and pass through the supply chain to the consumer quickly," said Ramprasad Gowda, a grower in Ajjampur in Chikmagalur district, pointing to an empty stock yard in his farm.
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