The presentation covers the supply chain of onions in India, the current scenario, the challenges, the future and the possible solutions. It is well documented with data points and research.

1. ONIONS SUPPLY CHAIN
APOORV AGGARWAL : 1902033

2. Supply Chain of Onion
FARMERS
LOCAL MANDAI
APMC Mandi
RETAILERS CONSUMERS
WAREHOUSE
EXPORT
wholesalers,
restaurants,
industries (food)
CONSUMERS

3. 1.Onion
production:
Farmers

4. RANKS:
1. MAHARASHTRA
2. MADHYA PRADESH
3. KARNATKA
4. GUJRAT
5. RAJASTHAN
Onion production in India

5. Onion production in world
Rank Country Onion production (metric tons)
1 China 23,507,759
2 India 20,872,100
3 United States 4,120,870
4 Egypt 2,208,080
5 Iran 1,922,970
6 Turkey 1,900,000
7 Pakistan 1,701,100
8 Brazil 1,556,000
9 Russia 1,536,300
10 Republic of Korea 1,411,650

6. • A global review of onion area and production revealed that
onion is grown in the world in an area of 53.64 lakh hectares
with a total production of 963.44 lakh tons and productivity of
18.79 tons/ha.
• India produces around 208 lakh tons of onion annually ranking
second in the world. The production has increased more than
five times during past three decades.
• The reason for increase in production is mainly due to increase
in area under onion cultivation from 1.94 lakh ha during 1974-
75 to 12.51 lakh ha in 2017-18.
• India possesses many innate advantages over other onion
producing countries - its large genetic base, varied soil and
climatic conditions and skilled human power.
• Currently in India the production of onion is 208.13 lakh tons
from an area of 12.51 lakh hectares with the productivity of
16.0 tons/ha respectively.
6

7. Onion Exports from India

8. • The major Onion producing states are Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Bihar,
Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, West Bengal, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh in the
country.
• These States account for almost 90% of the total onion production of the country
• The estimated production of onion during the year 2017-18 was 3.72 % higher as
compared to the previous year i.e. 2016-17
• As per the first advance estimate, production of onion during the year 2018-19 is expected
to be 1.49 % higher as compared to the previous year and 12.48 % higher from the past 5
year’s average production.
• India exports about 3 million tons. Considering 10 per cent spoilage and pilferage, total
availability of onion for domestic consumers is about 17-18 million tons.
• The monthly onion consumption in our country is around 15 lakh metric tons. That turns to
be 50 thousand metric tons of onion demand per day.
• When the Onion prices shot up to Rs.100 few weeks ago in the wholesale market, the daily
supply was as low as 10 to 12 % of the requirement.

9. 2. The middlemen

10. APMC Mandis
⪢ APMC comes under the purview of state
government. Farmers must sell the listed fruits
and vegetables to these APMC mandis.
⪢ At these APMC mandis are traders and
commission agents who decide their rates.
⪢ Traders in many of these mandis charge farmers
Rs. 25 per Rs. 1000 for paying them in cash.
⪢ Hence, farmers have to sell their produce to local
aggregators who sell the harvest at lower than
market rates.
⪢ In July 2016, the Maharashtra State Government
removed fruits and vegetables from the purview
of the APMCs.The state government has urged
the farmers to directly bring their produce for sale
in Mumbai.

11. ⪢ Farmers seldom get the MSP the government has stated for them. This
is because as the produce moves from farmers to the mandis a lot of
middlemen are involved.
⪢ Farmers are made to pay fees like hamali (labour charges for
loading/unloading) taulai (weighing cost).
⪢ Maharashtra farmers have to pay Rs4 per quintal as hamali and Rs12
per quintal as taulai.
⪢ In FY19 Farmers paid 1.78cr per mandi as a weighing cost alone.
⪢ In recent months, Maharashtra government has been able to ensure
that commission fees, for long taken from the farmers, are actually paid
by the traders.
⪢ However, this hasn’t brought much relief to the farmers as they still
have to bear other fees such as additional labor charges.

12. Warehousing/Storage3.

13. • The temperature and relative humidity are the prime important factors associated
with storage of onion.
• A high relative humidity (more than 75%) is the biggest enemy of onion storage as it
promotes root growth and development of storage diseases. In contrast the humidity
(less than 65%) leads to excessive moisture loss from the bulbs, resulting shriveling
and loss of weight.
• Sprouting is high between 5°C to 20°C. As far as the weight losses is concerned it is
less at 0-2° C or moderately lower at 25- 30° C. The temperature of 5 to 25° and more
than 30° increases the weight loss.
• The onions are stored in heaps/stakes under ambient conditions in our country.
• Various types of structures are used for the storage of onion.
• Most of these structures are traditional type. Several modified onion storage
structures has been designed and tested.
• These structures help in reduction of storage losses.
Storage method and storage environment

14. Storage Techniques
1. Traditional storage structure
• These structures have been
developed by the farmers as per
their requirements and
availability of materials. These
structures do not have bottom
ventilated.
• These are constructed wooden
logs, bamboos with roof of grass
or Mangalore tiles or asbestos
sheets. These structures may
have one or two rows /stakes of
onions depending on the width
of structure.
• These structures usually
temporary type and the storage
losses in these structures are
more than 50% in four months of
storage.

15. 2. Low cost bottom ventilated structure
Low cost bottom ventilated structure has
designed by NRC for onion and garlic for small
and marginal farmers. The structure is
constructed with bamboo/wooden framework
provided with bottom ventilation. The bottom
and sidewalls can be made of bamboo or wooden
bantams. The roof is made up of thatch from
dried sugarcane leaves or grasses. The storage
losses in this structure are 30- 35% for four
months of storage.
3. Bottom and side ventilated Storage
DOG has carried out extensive R&D on
storage structures and found that Bottom and
side ventilated two rows structure' is suitable for
25 to 50 tons capacity and 'Bottom and side
ventilated single row low cost storage structure' is
suitable for 5 to 10 tons capacity.

16. 4.Top and bottom ventilated storage structure:
This is a distinct type of onion storage structure
designed and tested by NRC for onion and garlic. This
structure is constructed with G.I.framework.
The floor is ventilated and constructed with wooden
bantams. The sidewalls are made of bamboo and
plastered with clay and cow dung paste. The
ventilation is provided at lower portion of western
sidewall and upper portion of the eastern sidewall.
The lower portion ventilator of e western sidewall has
control flaps to regulate the entry hot winds in
summer and high humid wind sin rainy season.
Plastered sidewalls control humidity in rainy days,
while maintains inside temperature during summer.
The structure can be constructed with 25 to 50 tonnes
capacity. The cost of construction would be about
Rs.3600/tones. The storage losses in this structure are
28-30% for four months of storage. This structure may
better suites to humid and high temperature areas.

17. 5. Cold storage
The onion can be stored under cold storage at 0-
2°C and 65-70% humidity with very minute
losses. But cost of storage and the problem of
sprouting in post cold storage in onion is main
problem. This problem of sprouting can be
minimized by gamma irradiation treatment.
The cold storage of onion is successful if
combined with irradiation techniques. In India
cold storage of onion is till in experiment stage.

18. State Wise
Capacity
Of Cold
Storage In
India
State Capacity(MT) Number
Andhra Pradesh and
telangana
1782561 442
Bihar 1415595 306
Chattisgarh 484087 98
Gujrat 2901807 764
Haryana 749830 338
Karnataka 560178 198
Madhya Pradesh 1263665 300
Maharashtra 978392 604
Orissa 540141 171
Punjab 2155704 660
Uttar Pradesh 14176062 2294
INDIA 34956991 7645

19. Distribution4.

20. Transportation
⪢ Transportation plays an important role in marketing of onion. It is
necessary to have quick movement from onion producing areas to onion
consuming areas so that the produce reaches without much damage
within a short time.
⪢ Normally onions are transported in bullock carts and tractor trolleys by
the farmers to local APMC Mandis, and in trucks and Railway Wagon by
traders for transporting to distant markets within the country.
⪢ For exports, onions are transported in ventilated ships by using 40 feet
containers for loading on ships.

21. Distribution Network

22. Private
Channel
Producer Cold storage APMC 2017Wholesaler ConsumerRetailer
Producer APMC Wholesaler ConsumerRetailer
Producer Wholesaler ConsumerRetailer

23. Distribution Network

24. Functionaries
Aggregator
Function as a collector purchasing
potato from farmers at the village
level and then selling it
Wholesalers
Specialized onion traders dealing in big
quantities of potato brought either from
the APMC market (during peak season)
or from the cold storage (during off
season). APMC
An APMC market is a regulated
market yard where a
farmer/aggregator facilitates the sale
of agricultural produce brought to
the market
Farmer
Undertakes substantial investment-
both in time and money, in the entire
cropping process.
Retailers
Most of the produce is sold at vegetable markets (mandi) in
India

25. Wastage
• Due to onion’s perishable nature, certain
quantity of produce is lost at different
levels of marketing as well as on the farm.
• In 2019 NAFED wasted around 30000 MT of
onions because of poor storage.
• The weight of onion also reduces by upto
35% because of loss of water from onion.
• Not only are losses clearly a waste of food,
but they also represent a similar waste of
human efforts, farm inputs, livelihoods,
investments and scarce resources such as
water.

26. SOLUTIONS

27. Solution: 1
⪢ India can skip several stages of modernizing the mandis through a
combination of two instruments — first, would be to enable direct
buying, stocking and sale of produce at modern agri-logistics hubs rather
than get farmers to first take the produce to poorly managed mandis.
⪢ This would eliminate the primary handling at the market yard, ensure the
availability of grading and standardization of produce at these
warehousing hubs.

28. Solution: 2
• An app called Mandi Trades- developed by
Edvin Varghese
• When a farmer registers on Mandi Trades, it
takes information of his produce, along with
location details, and stores it on a scalable
cloud-based database. For a buyer, it gives a
map-based view of available produce with the
produce info, sorted by his geographical
proximity to the farmer. It’s as easy as a breeze
to contact farmers, as his phone number is
available on the app.

29. SOLUTION: 3
• It is desirable to have cushioning material
below the bags to avoid damage to onions
from jerks due to poor roads. The losses
on account of rotting are lower in trucks
than in railway wagons, but transport by
trucks is costlier than the wagons.
Lasalgaon railway station is just 2 kms
from Lasalgaon APMC, and adequate
wagon arrangements are in place for the
last few years. Use of modified ventilated
wagons can save the crop from damage
due to heat.

30. SOLUTION: 4
• Absence of a robust production forecasting, and
price forecasting mechanism The Mahalanobis
National Crop Forecast Centre (MNCFC) at New
Delhi in the Agriculture Ministry was established
in 2012 to operationalize the use of space and
geospatial technology for better agricultural
forecasting and drought assessment.
• Under the Mission of Integrated Horticulture
Development (MIDH), the Department of
Agriculture has initiated the project CHAMAN for
assessment and development of Horticulture
through Remote Sensing & geoinformatics.
• It envisages use of satellite remote sensing data
for area and production estimation of 7
horticultural crops including Onion.

31. THANK YOU