Avoidance of wastage of onion produced locally can act as breather

The onion market is in a state of volatility again. This is to be expected as neighbouring India has slapped a 40 per cent duty on export of onions to stabilise prices in its domestic market. According to a reprt published in this newspaper, prices of the commodity has been increasing in all wholesale markets and presently onion is selling at Tk 80-100 per kilogram in retail markets. From all indications, prices will rise further. Indeed, the price of onion is going up every day with imported onion prices shooting up by Tk 5.0 a kg in the span of a day on Tuesday last. A similar trend is found with price of local variety of onion.

Traders claim that importers have taken a go-slow policy, unsure about whether they will be penalised by the authorities concerned if they import at higher value from the international market. The fact is that if the Indian export duty remains in place, prices will rise inevitably. The annual demand for onions in the country stands at around 3.0 million tonnes and domestic production of the same stands at around 2.5 million tonnes. The shortfall is met through import. The minister of agriculture assures that the price will stabilise shortly because apparently, there is a substantial local stock.

Unfortunately for Bangladesh, of the 2.5 million tonnes of this spice-cum-vegetable produced locally, at least 20 per cent (500,000 tonnes) goes to waste. This is an area that has not been looked into seriously enough. Despite Bangladesh harvesting a bumper onion yield this year, predominantly in northern Bangladesh, a significant amount is going to waste due to a lack of adequate storage facilities. Adverse weather conditions are responsible for a lot of this produce going to waste and hence proper storage facilities are required to keep them in stock, to be released to market as and when needed. Traditionally, farmers keep their stock of onions in makeshift storage lofts, but the heat wave on the one hand, and erratic rainfall on the other is causing the massive loss of onion stocks in rural areas.

Had there been cold storage facilities available, onions could be stored for up to ten months without loss of food value. Apparently ventilation is a vital component in onion storage because onions are not immediately taken from cold storage to the market - they are "heated in temperature-controlled conditions in order to prevent condensation". As onion is a vegetable crop that is widely used and constitutes an essential element in daily diet of millions of people in Bangladesh, proper post-harvest storage facilities are required to prevent this massive loss - the economic cost of which runs into millions of Taka.

It is not simply a question of having enough cold storage facilities, there is also the problem of having uninterrupted power supply to these facilities. Given that Bangladesh is now in the throes of power cuts outside of Dhaka, electricity supply to cold storages and a locally developed management system for preservation of this produce has to be prioritised. The Bangladesh Cold Storage Association (BCSA) has urged the government to ensure uninterrupted aupply of power because, according to BCSA, some 400 small and cold storage faculties throughout the country help preserve perishable items like different types of potatoes, fruits fish, meat and various other produces including onions.

Reportedly, the commerce ministry had planned to set up a cold storage in Faridpur, which is considered an onion-producing hub in the country back in 2020. The idea was to ensure stable supply of onion to the domestic market and reduce dependence on imports. The Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) was supposed to come up with a feasibility study and apparently that project is awaiting approval from the ministry. The study had concluded that cold storage facilities ought to be set up in Faridpur and Pabna, but the final decision remains entangled in red tape. Had the proposed projects been executed, those could have by now been operational. Industry insiders estimate that several hundred thousand tonnes of onion could be preserved in the post-harvest period.

Obviously, the import lobby in this country is powerful in various sectors and hardly favours any move towards galvanising domestic supply chain that would act against import.  The problems associated with onion preservation need to be addressed soon in order to avoid this yearly hiccup. Given the dearth of foreign exchange, every effort has to be made for preserving the annual yield of onion. It will help lessen the financial burden of loss on farmers and also make the market less susceptible to external price shocks.

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