Minister for Horticulture and Employment Guarantee, Shobhatai Phadanvis, Minister of State for Horticulture and Agriculture, Harshavardhan Patil and Agriculture Secretary, Dr U C Sarangi, recently called on the Union Minister of State for Agriculture, Sompal Shastri, to convince the latter and get his approval for the project.

Ministers and other high-ranking government officials discussed at length the problem of extremely unpredictable production of onions in Maharashtra, various difficulties in storage of onions and lack of a secured market for small onion farmers. The project approved by the Union Government is expected to provide a solution to the ongoing onion crisis nationwide.Giving more information about the project, Phadanvis saidthat over 10,000 small godowns will be constructed statewide in next five years. ``About 2,000 godowns will be constructed every year at a cost of Rs 20 crore. The godowns have been designed by the Horticulture Research Board, Nashik. Apart financial assistance from the Union Government, NABARD is expected to provide loan to the State government at low interest rate,'' Phadanvis said.

The minister added that to encourage farmers to purchase the best quality of onion seeds, the State government has decided to grant 50 per cent subsidy or financial assistance to the extent of Rs 400 per quintal on the purchase of seeds. She said budgetary provision for the purchase of 25,000 quintals of onion seed has already been done so that the farmers do not have to wait for long to purchase seed.

Though Maharashtra was the largest producer of onions in country, there was hardly any infrastructure available for storage of the produce. The onions come to the market twice a year, once in summer and in September on thesecond occasion. The seeds available here is of inferior quality and the onions produced using them do not last for long. Under the government project, the farmers will use superior onion seeds and the produce can be stored well for a longer period. ``This would avoid exorbitant increase in prices of onions when the production goes down and onion prices would not crash when production is in excess,'' Phadanvis said.