Prices for groundnuts have risen to as much as Rs 2000 per 20 kg in some mandis in Gujarat due to processors and oil millers anticipating a smaller Kharif harvest of 2.5 million tonnes in the current season as opposed to over 3.5 million tonnes in the previous season. Farmers in Jamnagar district’s Hapa mandi last week sold groundnuts for a record Rs 2050 per 20 kg. Although this price set a record for premium groundnut, at local mandis, groundnut is often sold for between Rs 1100 and Rs 1850 per 20 kg. Groundnut growers are receiving substantially higher rates for their products, despite the fact that the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for the crop for the current year is Rs 1170 per 20 kg.
Due to this, the almost 160 groundnut procurement centres established by the Gujarat State Co-operative Marketing Federation Ltd. in collaboration with the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd. (NAFED) have virtually stopped procuring groundnuts. According to sources in NAFED, groundnut procurement centres have been operating for the past month to buy groundnuts directly from farmers in MSP, but up till Saturday evening, farmers had hardly sold 5 tonnes of groundnuts to these centres. “We have been given permission to purchase up to 1 million tonnes of groundnuts at MSP in Gujarat.
According to the current state of affairs, just 39,539 farmers have signed up to sell their produce at these facilities. They aren’t coming to us, of course, since they are getting considerably greater prices on the open market. The source stated that NAFED centres would be open till January 26, 2023. ” We are expecting groundnut crop to remain around 2.5 million tons for 2022-23,” says Samir Shah, president of Gujarat State Edible Oils and Oil Seeds Association (GEOA).
Kishor Viradia, head of the Saurashtra Oil Mills Association, claims that groundnut seeding is at its lowest this Kharif 2022 season, with just about 1.7 million hectares planted as opposed to a peak of 2.1 million hectares during the Kharif 2020 season (SOMA). A study by the Solvent Extractors Association of India (SEAI) predicts that Gujarat would produce close to 3 million tonnes of groundnuts. Local dealers, brokers, and oil millers anticipate that between 2.5 million and 2.8 million tonnes of groundnuts would be produced. Gujarat is the largest producer of groundnuts in India, accounting for around 60% of the country’s total production, followed by Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka.
