Onion in Nashik: the crop that gets paid months after harvest

Most crops are sold soon after they come off the field. Rabi onion is not. It goes into a chawl and sits there while the grower waits for the price to move, and what comes out months later decides what the season was worth. Storage losses on stored onion in India are...

Chilli in Guntur and Warangal: colour is what gets paid

A chilli grower is paid on two things they cannot see while the crop is standing: colour value and pungency. The trade measures colour in ASTA units and heat in Scoville units, and both vary by variety, district and season. Teja and Guntur Sannam S4 command what they...

Banana in Jalgaon: the potash question nobody asks

Banana takes more potassium out of the ground than almost anything else grown in India. Not slightly more than nitrogen. Substantially more. Jalgaon runs roughly 48,000 hectares of it, mostly tissue culture Grand Naine on black soils, with yields in the 65 to 80 tonne...

Table grapes in Nashik: nutrition that has to survive an audit

Nashik accounts for the large majority of India’s table grape exports, and the season is short. Shipping runs from late December into April, with the best fruit moving in February and March. What makes grape different from every other crop a distributor stocks...
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