Impact of excess rains on yield, market availability and prices of onion

Not AvailableCrop production is risk prone and strongly dependent on the vagaries of weather. For the year 2002 meteorology centre at Pune reported 670 disastrous events of heavy rains, lightening, thunderstorm, hailstorm, floods, heat wave, squall, cold wave, dust storm, drought, snowfall, gale and cyclonic storm all over India. Excessive deviations or abnormalities in weather could therefore create fluctuations in productivity and production. When the commodity affected is a widely and daily consumed item like onion, the adverse impact on producers and consumers generate socio-economic ripples. This is what happened with onion production and prices in 1998 and 2005. During both the years, the onion production suffered mainly due to the abnormalities in the monsoon behaviour. This calls upon both short and long term pro-active mitigative measures to minimize similar happenings in future. A deep understanding of production and marketing of onion and how these are influenced by weather is critical to formulate proactive strategies. It is with this intention that we made an attempt to put together an analysis of effects of abnormal weather that prevailed during 2005 on production and marketing of onion. This is a collective effort of three institutes, CRIDA, NRCOG and NHRDF with initiation and overall guidance from the Natural Resource Management division of ICAR. We hope this compilation will be useful in devising measures for minimizing the undesirable effects on onion production and marketing. We sincerely thank Dr. Mangala Rai, Secretary, DARE and Director General, ICAR for his support and guidance throughout this effort. This compilation also drew heavily from the discussions with many researchers, resource persons, officials and farmers concerned with production and marketing of onion in Maharashtra. My co-authors join me in conveying our gratitude to all of them.Not Availabl