Buying against the Indian crop calendar

Almost everything on an Indian exporter’s list has a season. It arrives over a handful of weeks, it is at its best then, and for the rest of the year you are buying from storage. The difference is not academic: new crop is generally drier, brighter and higher in aroma, and it is usually cheaper, because that is when supply is at its heaviest.

Two broad seasons

Indian agriculture runs on two main cycles. The rabi crop is sown after the monsoon and harvested in late winter and spring — this is when the seed spices arrive: cumin, coriander, fennel, psyllium, mustard. The kharif crop is sown with the monsoon and harvested from autumn into winter, which is when chilli, turmeric and much of the pulse crop come in.

A few products sit outside both. Cardamom and pepper from the Western Ghats follow their own picking rounds through the second half of the year. Makhana is harvested from ponds in the eastern plains in the middle of the year.

What actually changes through the year

Moisture. New crop is dried to a stable level and stays there. Material held through a monsoon needs to be conditioned again, and that costs.

Colour. Chilli and turmeric fade in storage. A buyer specifying a colour value will find it easier and cheaper to hit near the crop.

Aroma. Volatile oil declines with time and with temperature. For anything sold on smell, the age of the lot matters.

Price. Arrival pressure at the mandi generally pushes prices down, and they drift up through the year as stocks are drawn down — unless the crop was short, in which case the market can invert entirely.

Why the calendar is not a schedule

Every published harvest calendar, including ours, is indicative. Rainfall shifts sowing by weeks. Acreage swings when farmers switch between crops chasing last year’s price. Carry-over stock from a big year can hold prices flat right through a small one. A calendar tells you roughly when to be paying attention; it does not tell you what this season is doing.

How buyers use it in practice

The three common approaches, in rising order of commitment:

Spot buying. Simple, and you pay whatever the market is on the day. Fine for small volumes and for products where quality varies little.

Buying at the crop, calling off through the year. Price fixed near the harvest, stock held, drawn down as you need it. You get new-crop quality all year and you are not exposed to a mid-season squeeze. You do carry the counterparty risk of whoever is holding the goods.

Season-long contracts. Volume and price agreed for the whole year. This is how manufacturers with a fixed recipe and a fixed retail price usually work, because the alternative is repricing a product every quarter.

The question to ask

Before you plan a contract around a calendar, ask your supplier what the current position on that specific product is: how the crop came in, what is in store, and where the market has been for the last month. That answer is worth more than any chart, because it is about this season rather than an average of the last ten.