India began moving onion buffer stock by rail on Monday to cool a price surge that has taken the national retail average to Rs43.53 a kilogram ($0.46), after the second-wettest June-July in 80 years in Nashik, the heart of the main growing belt in western Maharashtra.

The stock is going by "Kanda Express" rail rakes, or full trainloads, from Nashik to five consuming centres where retail prices are running above the national average — Chennai, Madurai, Delhi, Ernakulam and Guwahati — with more to be added later, Nidhi Khare, the consumer affairs secretary, told PTI on Monday. The state cooperatives NAFED and the National Cooperative Consumers' Federation are selling it at Rs35 a kilogram.

The trains carried nearly 12,000 tonnes to five cities in 2024-25, their first season, and about 88,000 tonnes to 16 cities in 2025-26.

Ministry data put the all-India retail average 59 per cent above a year earlier on Monday, at Rs43.53 a kilogram against Rs27.37. Chennai was at Rs60 against Rs33 a year ago.

Indian trade coverage has attributed the squeeze to "continuous rainfall" and rotting storage sheds. Nashik took 747.9mm across June and July, 229 per cent of its 1940-2025 normal and behind only 1993 in the 86-year record, according to ERA5 reanalysis data accessed via Cropli.

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The rain fell as a deluge, with Nashik logging 159.6mm in a single day and eight days of at least 25mm. The heaviest totals were over the areas that hold both the marketable crop and the storage sheds. Satana, also in Nashik district, ran 186 per cent of its normal June-July rainfall, and Mahuva, in Gujarat, 202 per cent.

That is the profile for waterlogging young kharif, or monsoon-season, transplants and for rotting the stored rabi crop, harvested in spring, that is meant to carry the market to October. Daily arrivals at Lasalgaon, Asia's largest onion market, roughly halved to about 8,000 quintals, or units of 100 kilograms, from 15,000 in the two weeks to 14 August. The average price there rose to Rs2,760 a quintal ($29) from Rs2,180.

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Farmers needing immediate funds were bringing limited quantities from their storage facilities to the market, an unnamed Lasalgaon market official said, according to Business Today.

By 19 August the Lasalgaon average had reached Rs3,700 a quintal, the Free Press Journal reported. Growers' effective realisation was nearer Rs2,000 once spoiled bulbs were discarded, it said.

Three months ago the same government was under attack for prices that were too low. Growers in Maharashtra were receiving Rs500 to Rs900 a quintal in late May, against a production cost the Maharashtra State Onion Growers' Association put at about Rs1,800, and the association rejected each increase in the central procurement rate as too small. "We are still firm on the demand that the Centre should procure onions at the rate of Rs 3,000 per quintal," its president, Bharat Dighole, said on 26 May, when the rate was raised to Rs1,580. He called a further increase, to Rs16.50 a kilogram in June, "a mockery of farmers, as it will only deepen their losses".

[chart slug="india-onion-price-surge-belt-rain-vs-normal"]

Production estimates diverge by crop, geography and date. Trade reports put the kharif onion decline in Maharashtra, the largest producing state, at 5 to 7 per cent. Nashik district's summer crop — the stored rabi onion now rotting in the sheds — was already expected to fall 12 to 15 per cent, to about 3.4mn tonnes from 3.9mn, on initial state agriculture department assessments made in March, after unseasonal rain and hail damaged more than 4,500 hectares across five sub-districts. The agriculture ministry's second advance estimate still puts 2025-26 output at 30.74mn tonnes, against 30.77mn a year earlier.

The two agencies have procured about 121,000 tonnes for this year's buffer. To accelerate buying, they more than doubled their procurement price to Rs2,645 a quintal by mid-August from Rs1,270 in May — above what Lasalgaon growers were realising last week, and close to the Rs3,000 the association was demanding in May. Khare said availability remained comfortable and buffer stocks were sufficient. "Mandi prices in Nashik are ruling higher than Delhi, which should not be the case," she said. "It means cartelisation and speculation are at work."

The consumer affairs ministry says onion prices usually pick up from August to September on festival demand, weather disruption and shifting demand patterns, and that it releases buffer stock into that window as a matter of course.

India has restricted onion exports three times in seven years — in 2019, September 2020 and August 2023 — each time after rain damaged the crop and domestic prices spiked. A 2020 US Department of Agriculture report attributed that year's export ban to "heavy rainfall in August that has damaged produce by 40 to 50 percent" in key growing states, after wholesale prices rose 150 per cent in a fortnight. Exports are currently unrestricted, after the minimum export price was removed in September 2024 and the 20 per cent export duty on 1 April 2025.

Those exports were worth $324mn in 2019-20 and went mainly to Bangladesh, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates. Demand is firm again across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, according to FreshPlaza, with China, Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan competing for the same business.

The next red onion crop is expected to reach the market 30 to 45 days late, FreshPlaza reported on 14 August, potentially keeping export-grade supplies tight and prices firm through September and October.