Patil has sent fax messages to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Union agriculture minister and the chief minister of Maharashtra, urging them to lift the ban ``immediately.''

If the ban on exports continues, he has said, prices will decline further, resulting in losses to cultivators, as the fresh stock of the late kharif crop is due for harvest within a month.

The wholesale prices of onions at the APMC have declined from average of Rs 1,400 per quintal to Rs 950 per quintal over the past one week, following the arrival of the delayed kharif and early late kharif crops. The downward trend is expected to continue when the APMC reopens on Monday after the weekend break.

The arrivals at the marketyard have shot up from the usual 7,000 quintals to more than 12,000 quintals over the past week.

Meanwhile,farmers from 11 villages in Niphad taluka have decided to stage a rasta roko on the Mumbai-Agra national highway on Monday, to protest against plans to set up a bird sanctuary in the Nandur-Madhyameshwar region.

Local Shetkari Sanghatana leader Bhagwan Borade said on Saturday that farmers facing displacement due to the sanctuary project would block the highway at Konkangaon Phata at 1 pm on Monday.

The project, said Borade, would displace about 2,000 families currently raising crops in the area, apart from taking over a pasture used to graze 40,000 heads of cattle from the surrounding villages.

The bird sanctuary is to be built on 10,012 hectares of land near the heavily silted Nandur-Madhyameshwar dam. The catchment area has been leased out for farming since 1973 for a period of 10 years. However, in 1992, the state government refused to renew the leases to make way for the bird sanctuary project.

The state government had announced plans for a sanctuary in the area in 1986. In 1995 the governmentdecided to exclude 8,177 hectares of private land and 21 hectares of Revenue department land from the acquisition.

Orders have been issued to acquire 1,962 hectares of land, which includes 150 hectares of revenue land along the banks of the Godavari river, 1,757 hectares of Irrigation department land and 55 hectares of Forest department land. Farmers cultivate 587 hectares in the area and the rest is used as a grazing pasture.

The Government issued orders banning the grazing of cattle from December 1, much to the annoyance of the farmers. The Shetkari Sanghatana has been spearheading the farmers' agitation, demanding that the bird sanctuary project be dropped.