Business Standard
Maharashtra onion farmers have urged the Centre to announce a special Rs 10,000 crore revival package, claiming that repeated export curbs, natural calamities and price crashes have pushed them into a severe financial crisis. Bharat Dighole, founder-president of the Maharashtra State Onion Growers Farmers Association, said that farmers have suffered huge losses over the years due to what he termed flawed export policies, spurious seeds, storage losses and other factors. He said the Centre's decisions to impose export bans in 2019, 2020 and 2023-24, levy a 40 per cent export duty and fix minimum export prices of $850 and $550 per tonne at different periods hit onion farmers hard. The central government's move to release buffer onion stock through NAFED and NCCF at lower rates in the domestic market adversely affected prices of the kitchen staple and caused substantial financial losses to farmers, he said in a statement. National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India
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