Sesame Seed Gujrat Summer Crop Prediction

Hi Everyone,

Since our last report in Jan the markets have been more or less rangebound as we thought they would.

Nothing much happening in the market except the gossips and predictions of a super Summer Crop in Gujrat . It seems like everyone expects the seeds to pour out of the farms onto the streets and a total crash in prices . We'll to be frank we don't really see that happening.

Lets look at a few reasons why we think so.

1:- The stocks in India are at really really low levels , its a fact I doubt anyone would deny now.

2:- Stocks at destinations are at a hand to mouth situation as well , I doubt there are buyers sitting on huge unsold stocks anywhere in the world.

3:- African cargo is practically over and they will not harvest till Early November in a big way.

4:- A new crop or a big new crop is not a unknown phenomenon . We have a new crop every year in every sesame growing region. Its much bigger in size than what we expect the summer crop to be and still prices do not fall let alone crash every time. Ofcourse a  new crop can start with a correction of 10-15% but how long that correction stays depends on so many factors which need to be looked at.

5:- With predictions numbers of 100,000-150,000 and even 200,000 coming out for summer crop I think most people have now forgotten what the average summer crop size actually is. So now even if we have a crop of say 80,000 MT everyone in the market will say its a small crop because the comparison parameters have been set to artificially high levels.

6:- While I was in Gulfood talking to a few friends everyone there predicted a super crop for chickpeas as well and within 3 weeks time the rains have practically turned the tables. Didn't the same happen to the sesame crop's in India over the past few seasons.

7:- Everyone says farmers would grow more sesame because the prices are high , but fail to acknowledge the fact that sesame is a low yield crop as well. So a farmer growing sesame today doesn't really make a killing compared to the other crops he can do as well. However going by the same logic the question remains that will the farmer who has seen his crops getting washed out for the past 2 seasons and lived in misery will dare to do sesame seed again if the Indian government predicts another good monsoon.The fact is that a good monsoon in India means that you can have a good crop of practically any commodity except Sesame.

Here are a few articles for you to go through to understand that with the unpredictable world weather how difficult it really is to predict a good or bad crop even after its been sown , let alone predicting a crop size even before the sowing started. Still have a good 2 months before new summer crop arrives and will be interesting to see how many Astrologer's who predicted a bumper crop revise their estimates in the meantime and get their clients into deeper troubles.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/rajkot/No-respite-from-rain-hailstorm-in-Saurashtra/articleshow/31773484.cms

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Fears-of-El-Nino-on-rise-may-spell-woes-for-the-economy/articleshow/31824485.cms

http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/storms-batter-half-of-india-damage-farms-and-crops/article1-1193410.aspx

The USD has started playing games as well just like we expected it to in Election Year. The USD has moved to 60.80 levels from nearly 63 levels a few months ago which is like a 3-4% appritiation.