Indore: Clueless about the total area of land used to produce onions, the government has now bet on traders to purchase the crop as the authority struggles to save the perishable crop from being destroyed by rains.While the district administration's revenue department shows one set of data of land used, the horticulture department has a different figure of agriculture land used by farmers for onion crops this year."The revenue department has given a statistic of 3,300 hectare of farmland used by farmers for onion crops. We have also taken this figure as the base for our work," joint director of district horticulture department DR Jatav said.He added that since the prevailing weather is favourable for onions, an increase in its production was recorded."Onion production varies from 250 to 300 quintal per hectare. This year, about 290 quintal for the same area was recorded," Jatav said.At this calculation, the total production of onion in the district totals to about 9.5 lakh quintal.According to regional manager of MP State Coperative Marketing Federation Limited Mahesh Trivedi, about 4.9 lakh quintal onions has been procured from four procurement centres in Indore, Mhow, Sanwer and Depalpur till June 26. He added that of this, a total 3.86 lakh quintal onions have been lifted while the remaining 10 lakh quintal is still lying in mandis.After receiving instructions from the state government, the authority has invited traders to participate in the auction process to purchase the crop."We had invited bids to sell 25 truckloads of onions through auctions. Ten traders showed interest and one deposited a bank guarantee of Rs 50,000 and participated in the process. He was awarded the order on his bid of Rs 2.15 per kg," Laxmibai Nagar Mandi's secretary BBS Tomar said.The government has been procuring onion from farmers at the rate of Rs 8 per kg. Due to the lack of space to store the produce, the government has now invited traders to purchase crop through auctions.

Stay updated with all the Latest Indore headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.