Sesame seedmarket synopsis — 29 September 2026

Hello again everyone , 

A week ago this was a balanced market. Brazil is confirmed short, Pakistan's yields have come in below expectation, and India's crop has gone from an exportable surplus to barely enough for itself. Nothing large is left to arrive before November. The next fortnight sets the tone for the rest of the season.

Three numbers that frame the season

• 381,500 tonnes sitting in Chinese ports.
• Three origins still offering at or below $1,200 — Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria. Everything else is above it.
• November–December — Pakistan and Brazil sold out, Nigeria arriving thin.

The four grades, as this report uses them. Crushing: oil, the cheapest tier and China's largest slot. Whitish: oil, paste, tahina, roasting, sorting, direct consumption. Hulled: India and a handful of African plants, sold to Europe, US, Australia, Middle East. Black: its own market, at roughly double the rest.

Where the market agrees

1. The short crop is synchronised, not local. Tanzania 225k to about 150k, with the South and Lindi grade down 41%. Brazil roughly 500k to 220k. Mozambique 100k to 50–60k. Pakistan's yield losses now confirm a crop below 275k. Nigeria confirmed short, with the extent argued between 20% and 30%. Origins sharing no weather system contracted in the same season.

2. China holds the world's carry-over. Port stock is 381,500 tonnes. January to July imports were flat in volume at 810,563 tonnes against 811,103, but at $1,144 a tonne against $1,404 — $260 less. The Chinese forecast for the full year is 1.30–1.35 million against a record 1.46 million.

3. Every major buyer paid less last year, independently. China down 15%, Japan down 15%, Korea down 18% on unit value, across three unconnected customs authorities. Two of the three bought record volume while doing it.

4. Farmer selling is price-driven, not cash-driven. Burkina's floor price fell and farmers simply waited; arrivals shifted from the December–January peak into February. Pakistani growers cut area after poor realisation last season. Brazilian farmers moved land to competing second crops. Origin supply now arrives late and responds to price.

5. No large buyer is single-origin any more. Korea's tenders clear across half a dozen origins at once. Türkiye has rebalanced toward West Africa and Ethiopia. Japan sits at 89% African. Where a buyer once had a preferred origin, it now has an approved list.

6. Compliance is a cost, and it sits at origin. Japan has logged 57 rejections since January 2023 — aflatoxin a third of them, carbaryl and imidacloprid most of the rest — and runs mandatory inspection on most African origins. Mozambique's compulsory local test at $7–9 a tonne delayed the whole May export window. Burkina's new licensing requires 500 tonnes of declared storage. Each of these pushes volume toward the larger players.

7. Crushing demand and food demand do not share supply. China crushes most of what it buys. Korea crushes 71%. Europe is bakery and organic. Türkiye is tahini and halva. Seed bought for oil cannot be turned around and sold to a bakery buyer, which is why a surplus and a shortage can be true at the same time.

China's port stock

The number is 381,500 tonnes against roughly 266,000 a year ago. It is a record, and on any normal reading it caps the market. It does not, for two reasons. The first is what the stock is made of.

Grade	Origins	Tonnes	Share
Crushing	Nigeria 116,205 · Togo/Mali 50,854 · Pakistan 40,515 · Chad 6,791	214,365	56.2%
Whitish	Tanzania 53,067 · Ethiopia 46,200 · Mozambique 16,366 · Sudan 5,417	121,050	31.7%
Natural white	Brazil	30,749	8.1%
Black	Myanmar	8,279	2.2%
Others		7,058	1.9%
Total		381,500	100%

The split mirrors Chinese usage almost exactly. This is slotted inventory, not a surplus in one place. Crushing seed cannot relieve a whitish buyer, and whitish stock does nothing for a crusher.

The second reason is cost. Every bucket in that table was bought below what it would cost to replace today — narrowly on the crushing side, by a wide margin on Brazil and on the whitish origins. Nobody holding it has a reason to sell it cheap, and the only thing moving it is consumption. Crushers are drawing on older stock and blending it with expensive fresh local seed to bring FFA down to specification, which also means the crushing-grade portion cannot be held indefinitely.

Tanzania and Mozambique have shipped about 90% of their crops and have little left to offer. Chinese ports hold roughly 69,000 tonnes of the two, several times what remains at origin. Until next year's harvest, a whitish buyer outside China is bidding against Qingdao rather than against Dar es Salaam or Nacala.

What has moved

Pakistan. From a 350,000 t forecast to 270–300,000 t, and yield losses now confirm below 275k. Around 40k shipped in August and 70k in September, plus cargo held for Korean tenders and active border trade — 140–150k already done. Balance 120–150k, gross. Word of mouth from the trade.

India. Area was up 15.1% and pointed to an exportable surplus. Badly damaged by erratic rain and weather anomalies. Back to square one — just enough for domestic demand and almost nothing for export unless we import.

Nigeria. Confirmed short, argued between 20% and 30%. Prices at origin rising slowly as the picture fills in. Cargo reaches China from November–December, but not in size.

Brazil. Confirmed short. Stocks no higher than 50,000 t. The carry question is closed.

Tanzania and Mozambique. About 90% shipped, nothing offered below $1,300, and at most 10k left to move after September.

Sudan and Ethiopia. Both expected smaller, at best flat. Premium grades priced above $1,400 and not available for shipment until late October or November.

Korea. 20,000 t awarded on 9 September. Pakistan took 63%, India none.

Türkiye. Hulling throughput rising and tahina demand strong on the back of the Middle East crisis, against very low stocks. A continuous buyer through to Ramadan, competing directly with China for West African seed. Word of mouth from the trade.

Freight. Now the largest variable in landed cost. Asia to West Asia has gone from $1,200–1,800 to $3,500–4,500 a box with war-risk surcharges; Indian rates to Europe and the US are at their highest since the Red Sea disruption began.

Pakistan overland. Volumes into Iran and Iraq rising at fair prices, as ocean freight prices Indian and African seed out of that demand. Word of mouth from the trade.

Somalia. No stock left to sell cheap, and Djibouti freight westward is as high as anyone's. Also out of Japan's chain this year.

Korea's third tender

Origin	Tonnes	Share	Weighted CFR
Pakistan	12,600	63%	$1,515
Mozambique	2,000	10%	$1,510
Burkina Faso	1,600	8%	$1,512
Tanzania	1,200	6%	$1,518
Niger	1,000	5%	$1,508
Nigeria	1,000	5%	$1,515
China	600	3%	$1,520
India	—	—	—
Total	20,000	100%	$1,515

Every origin cleared within a twelve-dollar band. Korea buys a specification, not a country.

The gap between these levels and what the same origins fetch elsewhere is sortex grade, palletising and the rest of the work that goes into meeting the spec. That is the useful signal: the market will pay for the specification it needs, and the money sits in the preparation rather than in the origin.

Two other readings. The November-arrival lot priced above the October one, so nobody is discounting the forward position. And Pakistan taking nearly two-thirds tells you where the good-quality cargo is being held back to — which is cargo that will not be offered cheap to China.

Nigeria is no longer a residual supplier

Nigeria now runs six or seven hulling factories that need hulling-quality seed through the year to keep running. It also carries a continuous commitment into Japan, which does not switch origins easily and has lost Somalia from its chain this season.

So the crop is spoken for before China sees it. Hulling factories first, then Japan, then Türkiye buying into Ramadan. What reaches China is the crushing-grade residual, arriving from November or December in modest volume, out of a crop already down 20–30%, with origin prices firming as the picture clears. The chance of Nigeria panicking and selling cheap is low.

Most models still treat Nigerian supply as one pool. It is now two, and only one of them is available.

India: the brakes are off

Sowing was very good, and erratic rain and weather anomalies have badly damaged it. What looked like a surplus with cargo to spare for export is back to square one: enough for domestic demand and almost nothing to ship unless we import. What makes this year different is not the damage but the absence of anything that would normally slow a rise.

Carry-over is well below last year. Bengal Double Skin, which usually caps domestic hulled when it runs, is itself priced high on a short crop. Imports are small and what is arriving is priced above domestic seed, so there is no discounted material to pull the market down.

The market is currently trying to correct toward African and Pakistani offers, but nothing underneath it is cheap, so the room for that correction is limited. Indian domestic hulled is the market most likely to move quickly from here.

Competitiveness depends on destination. India is broadly level with Nigeria on FOB, but Nigeria to Europe does not touch the Red Sea or the Cape and India does, at the highest rates in two years. Into Asia the geography reverses in India's favour. Against Pakistan, India is higher on FOB but has far wider reach and market penetration, and with Pakistan earning fair prices on border trade and holding limited hulling capacity, that gap should narrow rather than widen.

The balance as it stands

Origin	Last year	Now	Position
Tanzania	225k	150k	~90% shipped
Mozambique	100–110k	50–60k	~90% shipped, little left after September
Brazil	~500k	220–250k	Stocks no more than 50k; carry question closed
Pakistan	300k	below 275k	140–150k done; sold out by November or December
India	~255k	domestic needs only	Badly damaged; nothing for export without imports
Nigeria bloc	~285k	short by 20–30%	Hulling and Japan take it first; China sees the residual
Sudan	~289k	smaller, at best flat	Premium grades from late October
Ethiopia	210k	smaller, at best flat	Premium grades from late October
Chad, Burkina, Mali, Togo	~270k	unharvested	Too early to call; not expected below Nigeria

The handover. Pakistan has shipped or committed 140–150k of a crop now below 275k. The balance is gross, and Korean tenders and border trade keep drawing on it; at 40–50k a month it is finished by November or December. Brazil is sold out by then too. Nigerian cargo starts reaching China in November and December but not in volume, and the bulk of the West African refill has historically landed between February and April. China's crushing-grade stock is around fourteen weeks of crush if arrivals stopped.

So there is a stretch from November through to the West African refill with nothing large arriving from anywhere — and Chinese New Year and Ramadan both fall in early February, inside it.

The ledger

Bullish

• Brazil confirmed short with stocks no higher than 50,000 t, against demand from India, Türkiye, Egypt and China at once
• Pakistan below 275k and half sold, finishing by November or December at the current pace
• Nigeria short by 20–30%, with hulling factories and Japan taking the quality before China bids, and origin prices firming
• India back to domestic-only supply, with nothing to brake a rise — low carry-over, Bengal Double Skin priced high, imports above domestic
• Every tonne of Chinese port stock is below replacement cost, so none of it comes out cheap
• East African whitish effectively sold; what remains sits in Chinese ports rather than at origin
• Sudanese and Ethiopian premium grades above $1,400 and not shipping until late October at the earliest
• Türkiye buying continuously into Ramadan on low stocks; Somalia gone from the discount bid
• Freight blocks distant substitution, so regional shortages no longer arbitrage away

Bearish

• 381,500 tonnes in Chinese ports, enough to absorb an origin failure in the short term
• Stock is still being added to, and Chinese buying of the cheap end is steady rather than urgent
• Chinese imports flat in volume at a 19% lower price, with the full year forecast below last year
• Pakistan's balance clears through the fourth quarter without anyone panicking
• European volume flat with no growth impulse, and Middle East demand held back by freight
• Zero-tariff access keeps the cheapest African supply flowing into China whatever the price
• High prices cure themselves — at sustained levels farmers replant, and short-duration varieties exist in Pakistan and India

If this, then this

Brazil's shortfall sets the tone — 40%. Trigger: Brazilian stocks confirm at or below 50,000 t while India, Türkiye, Egypt and China are all in the market for the same tonnage. The origin that flooded the market two seasons ago becomes the one everybody is short of. Indian hullers, Turkish processors and Egyptian tahini plants compete with Chinese crushers for a supply that no longer exists in size, and the competition pulls the whole complex up. Crushing grade rises because its cheapest substitute has gone; whitish holds its premium because there is nothing to replace it either.

Orderly handover — 25%. Trigger: Pakistan's balance clears without haste into December, Nigerian cargo arrives from November in better volume than expected, and Chinese crushers keep blending old stock. The market stays balanced through the winter. The cheapest origins run out and values drift up, but nobody is forced to chase, and the port stock does its job as a buffer.

The northern crop disappoints — 20%. Trigger: West African, Sudanese or Ethiopian arrivals run materially below expectation from December, and world exportable supply falls below trade requirement. A benchmark reset rather than a rally, of the kind this market produces every five to seven years. Chinese stock is drawn down rather than merely held, and the buffer stops working as an idea. Freight amplifies the move, because there is no cheap distant substitute to bring in.

Demand blinks — 15%. Trigger: Chinese imports land well below last year with crush margins negative, and European and Middle Eastern offtake falls again. The only path on which the short crop does not matter. Crushing grade slips back toward last year's lows. Whitish barely moves, because there is still very little of it to sell.

Two things hold on every path. Whitish keeps a wider premium over crushing grade than its usual relationship, because the supply is simply not there. And hulled has to move further than raw in percentage terms to stay viable — a yield loss of a fifth means every rise in raw costs the huller more than it costs the trader. In a rising market the value-added end takes the squeeze first, and hulling capacity, not seed, becomes the constraint.

Freight has made distance a pricing factor again. The same seed now clears at different levels in Qingdao, Busan, Mersin, Alexandria and Rotterdam, and those gaps no longer close on the old timescale. That is why Pakistani seed moves overland into Iran and Iraq, why Egypt takes Sudanese cargo across the border, and why Nigeria is gaining in Europe at India's expense.

I hope the reports help you take the right decisions in the coming months and if you have and requirements or need for any further information , I am just a phone call or a WA message away.

Sesame Seed Market Report — July 2026

The Slot, and the Stockholder

Hello Everyone, once again.

It's been a while since I sat down to write one of these properly. Life and this trade have a way of keeping you busy. But a few things have been building in the sesame market over the last months that I've been wanting to put down on paper—mostly to organize my own thinking. So, here it is.

As always, these are just my readings: from the field, from conversations with friends across the trade, and this time, also from a fair bit of data that landed in my lap. Take it for what it's worth, and let's discuss.

Let me start with something I've been chewing on for a while. I was speaking in Istanbul last year, and after my talk, a Brazilian producer asked me a simple question: Now that China has opened up to Brazil, would India still buy Brazilian sesame and could China buy it all?

My answer, I think, surprised him. I said it doesn't really matter how much Brazil can produce. What matters is which slot in China's chain the Brazilian seed fits into and same for India.

The Slot

I've come to think of China not as one market, but as six or seven markets wearing one coat. They import somewhere around 1.2 million tonnes in a normal year (last year wasn't normal, but we'll come to that), and each slice of that has its own quality need, its own price tolerance, its own favorite origin.

We all know the varieties better than I could ever explain them here, but the thing I keep coming back to is how neatly they sort by destination. China takes white natural and crushing for its mills and black for its own trade; Europe, the US, and Australia take the hulled and sortex; and we in India buy raw white for our machines and sell on the finished product. Each of those is really its own distinct market.

The point I made in Istanbul was really about the ceiling on each slot. My sense, after all these years, is that if an origin's slot in China is 300,000 tonnes, dropping your price won't make China take 500,000. The usage is what it is, the blends are set, the downstream contracts are already written. I think this is why our own exports from India have hovered in that 200,000–250,000 tonne band year after year, even when the crop was much bigger. We filled the slot. The slot didn't grow just because our crop did.

Now, plenty of people in our trade see it differently, and they've told so in our groups: 

China buys on price, not loyalty, and every buyer has a replacement.

I don't disagree. Price does decide who fills a slot. Where I land slightly differently is that price doesn't seem to decide how big the slot is. In a normal year, one origin slips and another quietly takes its place, and nobody blinks. It's when everyone is short together—which is more or less where we are now—that there's no one left to step in.

There's one more thing sitting quietly under all of this. Most of Africa has always enjoyed duty-free access, and Pakistan secured preferential treatment a few years ago, which predictably drove their volumes up. The simple, underlying point is that Brazil and India carry a significant tariff disadvantage into China compared to the other major exporting countries. It feels like a quiet handicap on those two lanes that has nothing to do with how good the crop is.

Brazil is running into all of this now. Which is really the news of the season.

Brazil — I Asked Them Directly

Rather than add to the guessing, I got on a call with a few Brazilian exporters and simply asked them how it looks on the ground.

What I heard was sobering. The new crop is coming in around 200,000–220,000 tonnes. Against last year, that's close to a 60% fall. One of them said it was shocking even to them.

And it isn't the usual "area is down" story, which is what makes it worth writing about. The area did fall—growers moved to corn and to black matpe after last winter's price crash made sesame look unattractive at sowing. But the ground they gave up was the good ground, the fertile fields with the better rain. Sesame got pushed to the poorer plots and the late window. Then the rains ran late through the soybean harvest and cut off early (as they usually do around the 20th of April), so the late crop got barely forty days of water. Yield came off from about 550 kilos a hectare to around 350. Less area, and less on the area that remained—the two piling on top of each other. That's how you get to minus sixty.

A few other things they told me have stayed with me more than the headline number:

• The carryover is basically gone. Maybe 20,000 tonnes, which is nothing. Whatever the new crop is, that's what the world gets; there's no old stock hiding behind it.

• They're holding back. Where Brazil shipped 109,000 tonnes in a single month last September, this year they're offering little and waiting to see if their own farmers can even fill the contracts they signed. The sense I got was a trickle over four or five months rather than the flood of last year.

• Domestic processing is growing. Three new hulling factories have come up inside Brazil. For the first time, a real slice of the crop will be processed at home instead of shipped raw. For those of us who hull for a living, that's the line I'd underline: Brazil is starting to climb the value chain. Slowly, but it's begun.

One detail explains why Brazilian white walked into China's slot so easily: the cargo is almost always machine-cleaned, purity up near 99.90%. African white is machine-cleaned too, but not always, and often carries a couple of percent of impurity and light seed. So I don't think Brazil won only on price. It won because the seed fit the slot cleanly. Worth remembering when someone calls it pure dumping.

And on the slot argument, they confirmed it without my asking. The big advance commitments went to China; but India, they said, is now paying better than China on spot. Which I read simply: China locked its slot early on forward contracts, and India, arriving late, is bidding up what's left. Price choosing who fills the slot, not making it bigger.

The Rest of the World Looks Thin Too

The wider supply picture is about as tight as I can remember, and India is where I'd start, because I think it's widely misread.

On paper, the government sowing looks alarming, but I've stopped reading it straight. Take a look at this last year IOPEPC data compilation comparing government estimates against remote sensing:

Acreage, Yield & Production Estimates

States	Govt. Acreage 2024 (Ha)	Govt. Acreage 2025 (Ha)	Remote Sensing Acreage 2024 (Ha)	Remote Sensing Acreage 2025 (Ha)	Yield 2025 (kg/Ha)	Production 2024 (Tonnes)	Production 2025 (Tonnes)
Uttar Pradesh	3,53,328	4,39,011	2,91,824	1,97,857	85	41,914	17,806
Madhya Pradesh	3,28,800	2,27,200	2,59,628	1,06,032	74	35,723	7,893
Rajasthan	2,09,804	1,92,808	1,94,805	1,21,260	118	41,999	14,435
Gujarat	49,400	40,100	47,847	32,199	209	9,340	7,902
Sub Total	9,41,332	8,99,119	7,94,103	4,57,348		1,28,976	48,035
Other States	1,97,968	1,51,881	65,464	43,931		15,502	4,614
Country Total	1,139,300	1,051,000	8,59,567	5,01,279	105	1,44,478	52,649

For your understanding, the national yield of 105 kg/ha recorded here was calculated simply by dividing the total estimated crop by the total area. This means a massive chunk of acreage that got completely washed away is still sitting in that denominator, dragging the math down to an absurdly low average.

This year, assuming the total area remains the same or maybe a little more due to El Niño, and assuming a return to somewhat normal yields, we will at max get around 150,000–160,000 tonnes even if we double the yield and assume that most farms give an output. (Though, of course, that is just an assumption for now).

But the crop isn't really the story this year. The difference from last year is what's around it. Last year, India had a huge import influx from Brazil and Nigeria. That isn't happening this year. The summer crop was revised by IOPEPC to about 125,000 tonnes, arrivals have slowed, and yes, there's stock, but a lot of it has already gone into holding.

Here's the piece I think matters most and gets overlooked. For the last three or four years, there was a reliable release valve on hulled prices. Every time hulled crossed a certain level—usually into the October–December domestic peak—two cheap things landed at once: imports arriving in volume, and the Bengal double-skin natural (the crushing material) coming in cheap. The moment hulled ran up, people simply switched to Bengal double skin for hulling and pulled the price back down.

This year, I don't see that valve. The Bengal crop is barely 80,000–90,000 tonnes and it's expensive. It won't do its usual job of capping the hulling market. And the flood of cheap imports that used to break the rallies isn't lined up either.

So when we come into October with our domestic demand, we'll have a trickle of summer-crop stock plus whatever the new crop gives us. Harvest is running late this year because the monsoon came late, so I don't see real pressure before mid-to-late October. That's where it gets interesting. Early October on, if the material simply isn't showing up, people start to get a little nervous, and that's usually where the game is played.

One honest caveat on our own competitiveness: right now, India isn't competitive globally because freights are very high. But freights are the only thing holding it—on the seed itself, we're still very competitive. The bulk market just isn't here yet. Korea isn't aggressive, Europe is quiet, and the Middle East is running mostly back-to-back because of the war.

But that demand doesn't disappear; it defers. Ramadan falls early next year, around the 8th of February. Goods have to be in position by early January—colliding with our own peak demand and a thin supply side. Ramadan demand is mostly hulled, and that's India, Pakistan, or Africa. A lot of things arriving at the exact same window.

• Pakistan: The trade talk and the Chinese buyers put acreage down 15–20%, yet the official Punjab numbers I've seen have the province more or less flat. Both can't be fully right. My hunch is the mood is more bearish than the acreage. What isn't in doubt is the carryover—it is significantly low compared to a few months ago.

• Africa: Thin too. Sudan well down and only a fraction leaving for export. West Africa had people puzzled back in February—peak arrival season and the cargo had simply vanished. Tanzania and Mozambique both short of last year. Carry overs nothing significant in either too. Nigeria/Togo/Burkina/Mali and even Somalia , not one origin is stated to say they are sitting on any significant stock.

Put it together, and there's no comfortable cushion anywhere. In a picture like that, the old rule I keep coming back to holds: 

One origin short is worth maybe 10% on price; more than one at once, call it 25%.

The Part I Keep Turning Over

Here's what I can't stop thinking about: 

If every origin is empty, why is the biggest buyer sitting on more stock than it has ever held?

I've had three years of weekly Qingdao port numbers to look at, and what they show is genuinely striking. Around 132,000 tonnes at the 2023 peak, 229,000 in 2024, 315,000 in 2025, and this June nearly 421,000—the highest I've ever seen it. Then it fell back toward 370,000 within a week or so. (That swing, by the way, is why I've never fully trusted any single port figure. I read it as a range and a direction, not a fixed point.)

The mix has flipped too. Three years ago, Pakistani and East African seed filled the port; today it's mostly West African white, with Pakistan and Brazil already drawing down. And the origins doing the filling are, largely, Mozambique and Tanzania .

So why does China hold so much? For as long as I've been in this trade, carryover lived at the origin. India held a buffer, Sudan held a buffer. When China imported 800,000–900,000 tonnes a year, they held maybe 180,000–200,000 at port and no more. That's changed. Last year China imported a record 1.46 million against consumption of maybe 1.2. That surplus didn't disappear. It's the pile at Qingdao.

The thought I keep landing on is that China has quietly become the carryover holder for the whole world. The buffer that used to sit at origin now sits at destination, financed cheap. When I look at that 400,000-tonne number, I'm not sure I'm looking at hungry demand—I think I might be looking at the world's carryover, just moved to one place.

But here is where the suspense really sets in for this storyline: What if the replacement supplies this year to China simply do not add up to their baseline consumption, and that port stock starts depleting? What really happens when China's port stock falls below 300,000 tonnes and continues a downward spiral, with no origin sitting on huge, sudden supplies ready to replenish that pile? Does panic set in with high-price buying, or does China sit back and stubbornly let its ultimate stock advantage wither away? It adds a layer of genuine suspense to how this season will play out.

Where I Think Prices Sit

We're at or near the median level that's held for the better part of two decades—the kind of level where, in my experience, this market has usually found its floor and turned. Those of you who've read these reports over the years know how much weight I put on these benchmarks; they've rarely let me down.

The base has already lifted, but I think the upside is capped, and the cap is that port stock. While 400,000 tonnes sits at Qingdao, sharp China-led rallies keep getting sold into. The most experienced Chinese voice I heard put the 2026 average at $1,200–$1,400 even with production cuts, because the stock is a shock absorber: below $1,000 China's appetite turns near-bottomless; above $1,400 the stock comes out to cap it. That feels about right to me as a band.

The real triggers from here are narrow: a genuine shortfall in Tanzania or Mozambique, the Indian winter crop running into weather, more Brazilian yield stress or a shocker from Pakistan, or the day China decides to rebuild rather than run its port stock down.

But if I step back from the individual pieces, here's where I land. I don't think we're oversupplied this year. The mechanisms that used to pull this market down just aren't lined up. Put that next to a thin supply side almost everywhere, a late Indian harvest, and the Ramadan and domestic peaks colliding around the turn of the year, and it feels less like a comfortable market than a quiet one waiting on a cue. The current lull could hold, or it could flip the other way fairly quickly once people realize the material simply isn't showing up.

Looking at the supply side we've walked through here, I don't think this is a market that's short of seed so much as one that's short of clarity on who needs it, and when. So that's the game I'd play.

That's all from me for now. As always, these are just one man's readings—from the field, from good friends across the trade, and this time from the data too. I've been wrong before and said so, and I may be wrong again—though I've been right more often than not, and the old blog is all still there to confirm or counter that. Weigh it against your own view, and let's keep talking.

Stay well, and good luck with your covers.

— Mukul Gupta