COMMODITY OUTLOOK AND SITUATION ANALYSIS
Weekly Report : 07-13, July, 2019
Pulses Prices Rise 1-8% after Govt
Raises MSP this Season
New Delhi: Pulses prices have risen by 1-8% after the
government raised the
minimum support prices
(MSP) for the ongoing kharif
season. Traders and analysts
expect the prices to increase
further, with most pulses are
selling below the MSP. They say prices are also rising due to
lower crop acreage and rising demand for pulses.
“In the Delhi spot market, masoor price has increased by
7.4% to ₹4,350 per quintal, chana by 4% to ₹4,340 while
moong by of 3% to ₹6,200 in the past one week after the
increased MSP was announced,” said Anuj Gupta, deputy VP
research, commodities, Angel Broking. He said urad and tur
prices too increased by 1% to ₹4,925 and ₹5,650.
Other reasons for rising prices are pre-festival season
demand, higher consumption of pulses and restricted imports,
said Prerana Desai, head of research at Edelweiss Agri
Services and Credit. She said prices will go up since there has
been lower planting for tur (arhar), moong and urad. The area
for pulses has fallen 20% to 27.51 lakh hectare, according to
government data.
“Traders are buying pulses ahead of the festive season which
begins in August. Also, with the onset of monsoon, demand
for chana used for flour and other food items has increased.
The sharp restriction of yellow peas import too has contributed
to the firming up of prices,” said Desai. A trader said chana
prices are also increasing since besan manufacturers do not
appear to be mixing yellow peas, maize and broken rice in it.
“Both maize and broken rice are much in demand by the
animal feed industry and, hence, we see chana demand
increasing,” the person said, requesting anonymity. “Most of
the pulses are still selling below the MSP and there is scope
for a further increase,” said Sanjeev Kumar Chadha, MD,
National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation
(Nafed) which is holding 40 lakh tonne of tur, chana, moong,
urad and masoor.
Chadha said that even with deficit rain and less area
under pulses, the buffer stock will ensure steady supplies for
the special welfare schemes across 12 states in the country
and steady availability in the market.
Oilseeds, Pulses Planting Falls Sharply
due to Weak Rainfall
New Delhi:
Plantation of oilseeds and
pulses, which India imports
heavily, has fallen sharply
because of weak rainfall till
now but this can change soon
as the government has
announced higher support prices and the monsoon is now on
the upswing. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her
budget speech on Friday, had urged farmers to make a big
success in planting oilseeds just as they had done in pulses in
recent years. India is a heavy importer of cooking oil because
inadequate oilseed production leads to a huge shortfall in
domestic production of the cooking medium. Sitharaman had
also listed “selfsufficiency and export of foodgrains, pulses,
oilseeds, fruits and vegetables” among the 10 points in the
government’s vision for the economy. Crop planting as on last
Friday was 26% below last year, a much bigger gap than 9.5%
a week ago although the rainfall deficit narrowed from 44% in
mid-June to 23% on Friday.
Agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar is hopeful of early
recovery because the monsoon has improved significantly.
“Situation is under control. Cultivation area will soon increase.
IMD has predicted a normal monsoon and we are hopeful
things will improve fast,” he said. He also said the centre is
monitoring the situation closely with states and would take
every step to deal with any calamity. “Even it rains profusely,
there are parts which remains parched. So that is not a
problem. We are in touch with every state governments and
plans are afoot to deal with any situation,” he had said.
Due to delayed monsoon, farmers have sown crops over
23.43 million ha — down by 8.53 million ha from 31.96 million
ha last year. During the entire kharif season, farmers sow
around 106.36 million ha of land. “The shortfall is mainly due
to drop in acreage of pulses and oilseeds. The area of pulses
is down by 70% while that of oilseeds is down by around 43%.
The shortfall in paddy is 24% while the drop-in area of coarse
cereals, which includes maize, jowar, ragi and bajra, is around
26.5%,” said an agriculture department official. The
government recently announced minimum support price
(MSP) for kharif crops where it has hiked MSP of oilseeds like
groundnut, sunflower, soyabean, sesamum and nigerseeds in
the range from ₹200 a quintal to ₹311 a quintal. “Now that
the new MSP has been announced and monsoon covering
more areas, sowing activities will go up covering the shortfall.
The rains in July and August are important for crops,” said an
agriculture department official. The met department has
predicted advancement of rains in Haryana, Punjab and
Madhya Pradesh.
CAMPCO to slash price of wet cocoa
beans purchased from traders from
today
There will be no reduction in the price of beans being
procured from farmers, says cooperative
Central Arecanut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing
Cooperative Ltd. (CAMPCO) will reduce the price of wet cocoa
beans being purchased from traders by ₹5 a kg – from ₹50 to
₹45 a kg – from Monday. However, there will be no reduction
in the price of beans being procured from farmers, said
Suresh Bhandary M., MD, CAMPCO. CAMPCO is one of the
principal buyers of cocoa. It buys cocoa mainly from farmers
and partially from traders.
Mr. Bhandary told The Hindu that
the cooperative had observed that
some traders were now mixing
water with wet beans. Hence, the
yield from wet to dry beans has
dropped. The cooperative will
reduce the procurement price for traders for this reason. Since
cocoa procurement season began in April, there has been
remarkable increase in the arrival of wet beans to the
cooperative compared to earlier years. CAMPCO since last
month purchased about 20 tonnes of wet beans a day against
six to seven tonnes a day in earlier years. This could be
attributed to two factors, he said. According to farmers, cocoa
flowers have not been lost due to scanty rainfall since last
month. Hence, there is good crop in this season. Usually, the
coastal belt is soaked with heavy rains during June-July
resulting in loss of flowers and heavy moisture content in wet
beans. This trend has reversed this year.
Secondly, other major multinational chocolate manufacturers
who have enough stock of imported dry cocoa beans are not
purchasing wet beans in huge quantities. Hence, farmers and
traders who otherwise were selling the beans to them are now
selling them to the cooperative, he said.
The MD said the annual requirement of dry beans of the
cooperative at its chocolate factory in Puttur will be about
4,200 tonnes. It procured about 2,600 tonnes of wet beans
annually. He said that an advanced new machine procured
from Turkey for the production of choco chips at the factory
was commissioned about a fortnight ago. The machine has
the capacity to produce 10 tonnes of choco chips per day.
Now, it is producing six tonnes of chips a day. The existing
machine at the factory produced about three tonnes of choco
chips a day. Hence, the factory now produced nine tonnes a
day. Choco chips are used by food and cosmetic industries.
Indian Pepper too Hot to Handle, Loses
Out to Cheap Vietnam Stuff
Kochi: Indian black pepper continues to lose ground to the
cheaper Vietnamese variety in the world market while increasing
illegal imports through Nepal are keeping domestic prices in
check. Vietnam is selling the commodity at $2,800 per tonne, less
than half the price of $6,000 per tonne commanded by the Indian
variety. “Vietnam is currently dominating the global market. Even
Indonesian pepper, at $3,200 per tonne, is cheaper than ours,”
said Rajiv Palicha, chairman of the All India Spices Exporters
Forum. India has been losing its competitive edge in pepper
exports in the past few years as production has increased in
Vietnam, Indonesia and Brazil.
In 2017-18, pepper exports from India slumped 40%
compared to those two years ago to 16,840 tonnes, the lowest
in recent times. In 2018-19, as per data from the Spices
Board, shipments fell 25% year-on-year in the nine months
to December 2018. Exporters said shipments for the full
financial year could be 15,000 tonnes. Significantly, majority
of the shipments from India are value added exports of
imported varieties, mostly from Vietnam. The share of Indian-
origin pepper in exports has gone down as the spice from
other countries has become cheaper. Domestic pepper prices
are hovering around ₹350 per kg. While the import of
Vietnamese pepper through Sri Lanka has diminished with
increased monitoring, illegal flow of pepper through Nepal has
increased.
India lowers duty on 400,000 tonnes of corn
importsas prices jump
MUMBAI: India lowered import taxes on an additional
400,000 tonnes of corn to 15%, the government said on
Tuesday, to offset a rise in the price of animal feed in the
country following a drought last year. India allowed imports
of 100,000 tonnes of corn at the concessional tax rate in
June. The additional 400,000
tonnes of imports were permitted
at the same rate following a
request from the poultry
industry, the government said in
a statement.
India, the world's seventh-biggest corn producer, normally
imposes a 60% import tax on the grain, but an infestation of
the fall armyworm, which devastated African crops in 2017,
and dry weather in some areas have cut the country's corn
output. Amit Saraogi, managing director of Anmol Feeds Pvt.
Ltd., said the shortage of corn had been hurting the cattle
feed industry since last year and the additional imports would
help to bring down prices.
India was a major exporter of corn to southeast Asia until
falling output and increasing demand from poultry producers
and corn starch manufacturers turned it into an importer a
few years ago. The switch in India's position cheered rival
suppliers such as Brazil, Argentina and the United States,
which have now replaced New Delhi in the southeast Asian
market. India, which does not allow the cultivation of any
genetically modified food crops, has rules designed to ensure
that imports contain no trace of genetically modified
organisms.
These seed bankers are saving India’s
native crops
It was in 2001 that Sangita Sharma set up Annadana, a seed
bank with 20 varieties of indigenous seeds on her five-acre
farm in Bengaluru. Eighteen years later, her bank is richer by
800 varieties of desi seeds that
are cheaper and more nutritious
than hybrid varieties. The
history of Indian agriculture goes
back 10,000 years. Over
centuries, nature picked the
most resilient seeds that thrived in Indian conditions without
help of chemicals and fertilisers. Our native seeds. However,
they lost out to high-yielding hybrid seeds introduced in the
1960s as part of the green revolution. Dr Debal Deb, a plant
scientist and rice conservationist in Odisha, says that India
was home to 1,10,000 varieties of rice till 1970. Of these only
6,000 survive today.
Today, individuals like Sharma are reviving the food diversity
of India by preserving desi seeds from all over India. “I love
food. And I wanted to know where it comes from,” says the
former communications professional who now farms and
preserves seeds for a living.
At Dr Prabhakar Rao’s farm near Bengaluru, visitors can see
a number of desi vegetables in bloom. Red bhindi, red corn,
violet peppers and tomatoes in at least four different colours
including blue and yellow. Varieties that we never get to see
in the market. “India has lost 99% of biodiversity in
vegetables,” says Dr Rao, an agricultural scientist who started
collecting native seeds seven years ago, and today has 540 in
his bank called Hariyalee.
To reintroduce these varieties to people, Rao holds farming
workshops that attract urban farmers, terrace gardeners,
students and scientists. “Most people don’t know a crucial fact
about native seeds: they cannot be grown using chemicals. If
I add urea to a native wheat variety, it will grow tall grow tall
but easily snap in the wind. In contrast, GMO and hybrid seeds
cannot grow without the use of fertilizers and pesticides. Also,
they are designed to not reproduce. This ensures that the
farmer has to go back to the seed corporation every sowing
season to buy seeds,” says Rao, who started his career during
the green revolution but had a change of heart when he
realised the long-term unsustainability of chemical
agriculture.
A software engineer by profession, Babita Bhatt left a
corporate career in Gurugram three years ago, and moved to
Dehradun along with her husband Alok to preserve heirloom
seeds. She also set up an e-store, Himalaya2home, to sell
these seeds and other products like native dals, oils and
flours. “There’s so much pesticide in our food. Cancer cases
are increasing. What is happening to our food chain is
obviously affecting our health,” says Bhatt, who sources seeds
from all over Uttarakhand. She introduced a desi variety of
black rice, indigenous to Imphal valley, to some local farmers.
“I figured that the climate conditions in Doon and Imphal are
similar and decided to experiment. The rice has taken very
well to Dehradun,” she adds. However, the local Type 3
Dehradun basmati, famous for its fragrance and long grains,
is no longer the same. “Paddy here was grown with water fed
from mountain streams. Now, the streams have little water
left in them or it’s contaminated. So, while the desi variety is
around, it has lost its aroma,” says Bhatt. On her e-store, she
sells 15 varieties of rajma sourced from valleys across the
state, like Henval, Bhagirathi, Johar, Alaknanda and Doon.
One of her suppliers is Vijay Jardhari from Jardhar village in
Henval valley, Tehri-Garhwal. Jardhari, 67, runs Beej Bachao
Andolan, a social initiative to preserve seeds native to
Uttarakhand. A key figure in the Chipko movement, Jardhari
started collecting native seeds in 1985-86, and today has
around 150 varieties of rice and 200 varieties of rajm, in
addition to desi vegetables. Of the rice varieties, some like
tapachini and jhamcha, yield 70 quintals/hectare. In
comparison, Pusa RH 10, a hybrid basmati, yields 65
quintals/hectare. “Native varieties act like vaccines,” says
Jardhari. “You have them in the season and you are recharged
for the rest of the year. If you eat kulath dal (horse gram) two
to three times in winter, it will prevent stone formation. If you
have stones, then drinking its water will help dissolve them,”
says Jardhari, who is invited to many sustainable farming
conventions both in India and abroad.
Though Jardhari’s claims stem from traditional knowledge
of farmers and don’t necessarily have scientific backing, there
are many converts. Cancer survivor Amit Vaidya is one of
those. “Hybrid tomatoes can’t be stewed the same way as desi
tomatoes. Their skin comes off differently. Native beetroot
varieties are softer, sweeter and darker in colour indicating a
higher concentration of antioxidants. I know where my food
comes from and it makes all the difference,” says Vaidya, who
lives on Vypin island, near Kochi. Sharma of Annadana says
it’s time the government steps in to preserve native seeds.
“State horticulture farms can start using them,” says Sharma,
who’s looking for collaborations to create more community
seed banks.
Source : Verbatim reproduced from different sources
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