Onions were seen selling at Tk 240–250 a kg in various Dhaka markets on Saturday. In August the same onions were available at Tk 70–80 a kg.

After India stopped exporting onions on 29 September, the price jumped at once to Tk 120–150, and it has kept rising since.

As onion prices climbed over the past month and a half, Dhaka resident Salma Akter has cut back on eating them.

"My family of five used to need three kilos of onions a week. At the current price it isn't possible to buy onions at such a cost, so we've cut down. Now I buy one to one and a half kilos a week."

Experts say that unless Bangladesh can grow enough onions at home, such a crisis could return at any time.

That raises the question of whether it is possible simply to cut import dependence and raise production.

Professor Dr Mohammad Zahiruddin of Bangladesh Agricultural University said that although the country needs to grow more onions, farmers face a number of challenges in producing the crop.

Farmers are not as keen on onions as they are on rice, because rice is relatively more profitable.

The land on which onions are grown is also used for other crops, so onion production competes for that land.

And in Bangladesh's reality, the area of land for growing crops cannot simply be increased at will.

Source: BBC Bangla. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.