Onion brings cheers to debt-ridden Karnataka farmer, makes him crorepati

Onion prices
might be making everyone cry. But this farmer from Chitradurga in Karnataka is crying
tears of joy. 42-year-old Mallikarjuna from Doddasiddavvanahalli has made a
huge profit by planting onions in his 10 acres of land.

Mallikarjuna,
who had taken a loan of Rs 15 lakh has become a crorepati within a month owing
to the profits reaped from his onion crops.

Mallikarjuna
had told the media that he would have got caught in a bad debt as the crop
failed or prices dropped.

Fortunately,
neither happened and he received 240 tonnes of onion, which is approximately
around 20 truckloads. The farmer, with the help of his profits has been able to
clear his debts.

He has now
taken 10 acres of land on lease and hired around 50 field workers.

Mallikarjuna
has said that since the region has been facing a drought-like situation,
everything depends on groundwater and that many farmers have given up
agriculture due to bad less rainfall.

But he added
that once onion prices shot up, there was no looking back and that in the first
week of November, the price was around Rs 7,000 per quintal and within a few
days, it touched Rs 12,000 per quintal.