I, onion: An authorised biography of the humble vegetable (Down to Earth)

Down to Earth (India) in the climate change section posted an article about onions. The tuber is a round-the-year cash earner for farmers. However, the Indian Parliament voted me out of the country’s essential commodities list in mid-September 2020. According to IFPRI, (Food inflation and food price volatility in India: Trends and determinants) India has been facing high food inflation post-2009, when a severe drought hit. This might be the cause for changes made by India’s parliament, but perhaps they are not focused on the true culprit(s). According to the decadal analysis by IFPRI, onion contributes just 2 percent to overall food inflation while tomato contributes an insignificant 1 percent. Rice contributes about 11 percent. Milk at 22 percent has the highest impact on food inflation. There is, in fact, no standard trend to show which item usually impacts food inflation. But it depends on situations in a specific period. The December 2019 inflation seems to have been caused by the price rise of both onion and milk.