India's onion has outsmarted governments, but climate change is making it cry

This week, for Climate on My Plate, we discuss the onion on your plate, and why its price keeps swinging higher as the climate becomes less predictable.

In Short

• Unseasonal rains damaged over 6,20,000 hectares of crops in early 2026
• Waterlogging during monsoon destroys onion bulbs, triggers fungal disease
• El Nino years historically push food inflation 170 basis points higher

Every Indian has a complicated relationship with the onion.

It has brought down governments, sparked street protests, and turned an ordinary vegetable into a political emergency. And now, this ordinary vegetable is at risk, thanks to climate change.

This is the latest story in Climate on My Plate, India Today Science's series on how the climate crisis is reshaping the everyday things we eat, drink, buy and own.

This week, it is the onion on your plate, and why its price swings are becoming more extreme, more frequent, and harder to predict.

WHY DOES INDIA'S ONION PRICE KEEP GOING HAYWIRE?

India is the world's largest producer of onions, growing them across three seasons: the kharif crop planted during the monsoon, the late kharif, and the rabi crop harvested in spring.

This staggered system was designed to ensure year-round supply. Climate change is dismantling it one season at a time.

In March and April 2026, unseasonal rains and hailstorms damaged over 6,20,000 hectares of crops across India.

Onion and garlic fields in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh were among the hardest hit, according to Down to Earth's analysis of India's crop loss data.

What was once a risk confined to the monsoon months is now a pre-monsoon threat too. Indian onion farmers are now facing two high-risk seasons in a year instead of one.

WHAT DOES MONSOON DO TO AN ONION?

The onion bulb is a storage organ, which means it is a part of the plant that stores nutrients and water underground for the plant's future use. It forms underground, in the soil, and is acutely sensitive to moisture levels during its development.

Too little water during bulb formation and the onion stays small. Too much water, and the problems multiply rapidly.

Waterlogging, which is what happens when the soil becomes so saturated with water that air pockets between soil particles are completely displaced, directly suffocates the onion's roots.

A 2025 study published in PMC confirmed that among the three cropping seasons in India, the monsoon season onion crop is the most vulnerable to heavy rainfall and waterlogging.

When soil stays flooded, it also creates ideal conditions for fungal diseases like anthracnose, caused by a fungus called Colletotrichum gloeosporioides, to attack the crop.

The combination of waterlogging and disease can wipe out entire fields within days.

In Nashik, which supplies a significant portion of India's onions, farmers have reported that up to 80 per cent of the kharif and late kharif crop was destroyed in recent seasons due to relentless rainfall.

HOW DOES EL NINO MAKE THINGS WORSE?

In 2026, the onion is caught between two forces.

The IMD has forecast monsoon rainfall at 90 per cent of the long-period average, meaning below normal for the season overall, with El Nino, a periodic warming of sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean that weakens Indian monsoon winds, declared as of June 11.

A weak monsoon means the rabi onion crop, which depends on soil moisture carried over from the monsoon, may struggle to develop properly.

As analysis cited by Business Today notes, every one percentage point shortfall in monsoon rainfall below the long-period average is associated with approximately 0.4 percentage points lower crop output growth.

With a 10 per cent deficit forecast, the arithmetic for onion farmers is rather comfortable.

Historically, food inflation during El Nino years runs approximately 170 basis points higher than during normal years.

The onion, India's most politically sensitive vegetable, sits directly in the path of inflation.

WHY IS STORAGE ALSO A PROBLEM?

Even when the onion survives the monsoon, climate change creates a second threat in storage.

Onions are stored in open-air structures before reaching consumers.

Rising temperatures accelerate the sprouting and rotting of stored onions, shrinking supply further and pushing prices up even when the harvest has been adequate.

The onion's problem is not just one bad season. It is a climate system that has become fundamentally less predictable, hitting the crop in the field, the storage, and the supply chain simultaneously.

The price you pay at the vegetable shop is not just a number but a measure of how much the weather has changed.

#ClimateOnMyPlate

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