NASHIK: The Centre has instructed the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Limited (Nafed) to buy 50,000 metric tonne (MT) of summer onion , its highest-ever procurement, to help the government tide over any price hike later in the year.The central agency will start onion procurement from mid-April. Over 45,000 MT onions will be picked up from Maharashtra and the remaining 5,000 from Gujarat . Before this, the maximum onions the government had bought was 13,500 MT in 2018.The Centre's decision to procure such a huge quantity of summer onions would have a positive impact on the wholesale prices, ultimately benefiting the farmers. A large section of onion farmers had suffered huge losses last year after the prices crashed. The government announced a compensation package to make up for their losses.Union agriculture ministry sources told TOI that the move to procure onions was to stabilise any erratic swing in wholesale prices and to meet any scarcity that may arise between July and October. "The onion procurement is to be done under the price stability fund (PSF)," the sources said.Nafed officials said the agency has already started planning the procurement. They will start buying from APMCs in Nashik district from the first week of April and later from other onion-growing pockets in Maharashtra, including Ahmednagar and Pune.At present, the average wholesale onion price is around Rs 600 per quintal. But this could swell to about Rs 1,000 per quintal as demand will increase once Nafed enters the wholesale market.

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