Government-supplied air-flow machines meant to curb Bangladesh’s reliance on onion imports by helping farmers store their crop have failed to prevent large-scale spoilage in Meherpur district, leaving growers saddled with mounting losses and casting doubt over a flagship adoption drive.

The technology was distributed in Mujibnagar upazila under an incentive scheme accompanied by official training, but farmers say stored bulbs are rotting within weeks. District agriculture extension officials confirmed that 128,000 tonnes of onions had been harvested from 5,200 hectares this season across the district, much of it destined for storage. Many growers held back produce from the immediate post-harvest market, expecting that the air-flow method would allow them to command better prices later while reducing the need for imports.

“We had hoped to recover costs and then make a profit by storing the crop, but now the loss equals the value of 10 bighas of onions, not five,” said Abdul Awal, a farmer from Bhaberpara village who took one government machine and bought a second with his own funds.

Sirajul Islam, a union council member and farmer from Ramnagar, said he had followed the training instructions precisely for his four-bigha harvest but still failed to avoid the rot. He stored roughly 250 maunds (each maund is roughly equal to 37.32 kilograms) of onions — well below the 300-maund capacity per machine — yet decay set in anyway.

Experts said air-flow technology becomes ineffective unless calibrated with correct temperature and humidity controls, adequate ventilation and suitable storage structures. They also pointed to pre-harvest factors including bulb maturity, drying methods and the failure to cull diseased onions before storage.

Sanjib Mridha, deputy director of the district agriculture extension department, said the machines were new and required user proficiency. “There can be issues with electricity supply and other factors that cause spoilage,” he said, while insisting the equipment was of good quality. He noted that fertiliser application timing, rain and other agronomic factors could also trigger post-harvest decay, and said his department was working to resolve the problem.

Farmers claimed repeated approaches to local agriculture offices had yielded no effective remedy. The spoilage threatens not only individual livelihoods but also the broader policy objective of building a technology-led storage system to stabilise domestic onion prices and cut import dependency.