Cumin Seeds in India Remained Erratic In 2021

The Cumin Market for 2021, despite being of an appreciative nature compared to last year, the erratic trends were quite evident. Across most of the months, there have been ups and downs in the prices. The good demand for the spice led to the overall price increase of Cumin in this year compared to 2020.  It is expected the lowering of the sowing area might help the Cumin price to remain stable and go bullish in the coming months.

Overall Scenario Of Cumin For The Year

• The months of January, April, and May were primarily stable for Cumin spot market prices, without significant increase or decrease.
• Significant decreases in the price of Cumin were noted for the months of July and September.
• The market was appreciative of the spice in the months of March, August, October, and November. However, November witnessed a few significant price dips too.
• The months of February, June, and December remained a bit unstable for the spice.

Factors that made the market erratic for Cumin

A few factors that resulted in the price becoming erratic for Cumin this year were:

• Whenever the prices dipped in the spot markets, the buyers became active, which supported the market to stay stable.
• However, every time the price has lowered, the farmers and stockists refuse to release their produce. Instead, they started waiting for the prices to go up before trading, which helped the price move up.
• Countries like Syria and Turkey had poor production of Cumin, resulting in countries that import the spice looking towards India to fulfill their demand, which helped with the price increase.
• The Spice Board of India revealed compared to the 2019-2020 export of the spice, which was 210 thousand tons, in 2020-2021, the country shipped about 300 thousand tons.

Current Situation

• The value for Cumin increased by 48 percent in terms of price – from $ 43,68 million to $55,82 million.
• The only two competitors of India have been Turkey and Syria. But in the last two years, the internal political conflict, increase in freight prices, unfavorable weather conditions, and other factors have dwindled their trade.
• Previously, Turkey and Syria exported between 40,000 and 50,000 tons of Cumin, which has now become negligible.
• Also, the Iranian production of spice has been down by 60 percent due to the unusually cold weather and severe drought. This has resulted in extensive crop loss.
• The Indian market of Cumin is being supported by the good demand placed from America, China, Europe, and even South America. According to local traders, the international demand is more than the domestic demand for the spice.
• The Spice Board revealed India, between 2021 January and June, exported 15 million tons instead of 13 million tons during the same period of the last year.
• On December 3, 2021, a new circular was announced, Circular No. 17/2021-22, that stated China had amended the pesticide requirement of their cumin import from India. From now they will import Cumin (HSN Code:09093121) which should have only these two requirements:
  • Extraneous matter:3.0% max
  • Other seeds:0.25% max
• With this new circular, the Cumin export market of India has changed quite a lot since the latest amended Cumin quality is found in the regular Cumin produced by India.
• For the last two years, cumin prices have failed to give the profit that the farmers were looking for. As a result, most cumin sowing farmers have shifted towards cultivating other crops.
• As per the market experts, farmers of Cumin are likely interested in sowing crops like Fennel, Groundnut, Soyabean, and Ajwain. These crops are expected to give a better return compared to the Cumin seeds.
• With the relaxation of travel bans and other Covid lockdown restrictions across south Asia, European countries, and the USA, there is the expectation the export demand will rise, which will help the cumin price in the market. This is likely to improve the price.
• Rajasthan and Gujarat have completed 56 to 60 percent of the sowing of the spice.
• Gujarat, the leading producer of Cumin, has decreased its sowing from 381,055 hectares to 237,866 hectares as per the Gujrat Agriculture department.

Arrivals

Unjha spot market, the benchmark for Cumin, reported having 141,297 MT arrival between January 1 and December 7. It is reported to be down by 7,26 percent compared to last year. In 2020 during the same period, the arrival was recorded at 152,351 MT. The lower arrival can be attributed to the market being closed between March 23 and April 27 for the Covid-19 lockdown.

Prediction

The overall production of Cumin is expected to decrease in the country for the market period 2021 -2022 from last year’s 8.2 million bags to 5.5 million bags, which is about 451,451 MT and 391,801 MT, respectively.

By combining the lesser crop production and good domestic and international demand, traders and farmers expect a higher price for the crop in the coming days.

Price

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