Bheelu knows all this. After all, he's spent his life growing onions and nothing else. But in times such as these, when a kilo of onion seeds costs him Rs 1,000, he's desperate. He has to return a Rs 9,000-bank loan for a well he had dug to water the two-and-half acres he owns at Sogras, a village no different from the others in the Nashik-Chandwad onion belt.

Close to Sogras is Pimpalgaon where, at the wholesale market yard, 30-year-old Sahibrao Malwade moves around with a tractor-trolley to cart the waste which farmers leave after selling their produce. Malwade has been on the jobthree years now. His younger brother, who works on the family's small plot at Ahergaon, hasn't had much luck with onions.

``We should have grown tomatoes. At least, we would have got something in return. After last year's onion crop failed, we decided we would cultivate grapes as well. We have experimented with grapes this year. Let us see what happens. If the grapes too go the onion way, we will be left with nothing. What can I say about onions? When the conditions were normal, our plot yield used to be something like 150 quintal. But this year it was not even 50 quintal,'' sighs Malwade.

The predicament of Thombre and Malwade typify the plight of the small farmers -- those with holdings less than five acres -- engaged in onion cultivation in Maharashtra, the country's top onion producer and one of the three states to go in for a late kharif crop which is harvested from January.

Adverse weather conditions, which have already put paid to the kharif crop, now promise a very low yield late kharif harvest.It is estimated that 30 to 40 per cent of the late kharif bulbs have been destroyed. Seeds are selling at a prohibitive Rs 1,000 per kg, forcing farmers to tap all sources for money.

Staring at the second successive year of crop failure, the small farmer finds himself trapped in a situation where he has to return loans, raise more money for seeds for the next crop and, as some have been suggesting, even think in terms of an alternate crop.

``City folks complain of galloping onion prices. They all believe the onion producers have turned rich. The truth is that the small farmer is on the road to destruction. Onion seeds now cost have multiplied four times in recent months. So if you are going to devote a two-acre plot to onion cultivation, you will require approximately six kilogram of seeds. And that is not all. Take into account the other inputs, the costs and the manhours in the field,'' says S K Shinde, a supervisor at the office of the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) in the Chakansub-market near Pune.

Shinde himself comes from famiy with a three-acre holding devoted to onion cultivation. He says his family had spent Rs 9,000 on seeds alone. But there has been large scale destruction of the bulbs and he doubts whether his family will be able to harvest anything worthwhile January onward.

The wholesale rate for onions at the Chakan sub-market, where the farmer brings his produce, today varies between Rs 1,200 to Rs 1,700 per quintal. And at the country's largest wholesale market at Lasalgaon near Nashik, the going rate is more or less the same. But these high rates offer no comfort to the small farmer because his yield this year has been so little, and of a quality which just cannot command a price.

``The input costs are frightfully high. Seeds alone are tagged at a small fortune. And the yield is a joke. The quality of onions is inferior. Given such conditions, how can the farmer hope to get a decent price? When he takes this small produce to the wholesale market, it is he whohas to bear the commission agent's cut, the handling and weighing charges. All these charges work out to be almost 10 per cent of the total value auctioned. To suggest that the farmer has prospered is not just absurd but cruel,'' says Shinde.

Small farmers, who agree with Shinde, do not recall a year so destructive for onions. Yet they have returned to their slushy fields, trying to recover whatever they can and hoping, as always, for a better crop next season.