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Informist, Wednesday, Aug 21, 2024

By Pallavi Singhal

 

NEW DELHI – Retail prices of potato, up 56% on year as of Tuesday, are expected to stay firm, at least till early November due to supply shortage and hoarding of the vegetable at cold storages, said agricultural experts.

Potatoes were sold at the average market price of 37 rupees per kg on Tuesday, up 2% from a week ago. Prices had last risen to this level in November 2020, when the rate of price rise of the commodity was 107% on year, as per data from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. Potato prices had increased 66% on year in July, the data showed. Wholesale prices of the commodity were 2,992.09 rupees for 100 kg as of Tuesday, as per data from the consumer affairs ministry.

"The supply of potatoes is short by about 3-4 mln tn this year as crops were damaged in several parts of the country due to heat waves this summer," Deepak Pareek, an agricultural analyst, told Informist.

Adverse weather conditions earlier this year in the key potato-growing states of Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have resulted in reduced potato output in the crop year 2023-24 (Jul-Jun). Potato production in the country is expected at 56.76 mln tn in 2023-24, decreasing 3.4 mln tn from the previous year, as per the government's second advance estimates.

Hoarding by large traders and farmers is also impacting the crop's supply in the market, further pushing up prices, experts said. "Due to a sudden mushrooming of private-run cold storages across the country, farmers and traders have been able to hoard potato without government knowledge. They are holding stocks in anticipation of a further price rise in coming months," said Sanjay Gupta, chief executive officer of National Commodities Management Services Ltd, or NCML, which provides warehousing, stock and inventory management services for agricultural commodities.

Currently, 8,653 cold stores with total capacity of 39.4 mln tn are operational in the country, as per a December 2023 release by the Press Information Bureau.

The demand for potato, according to Pushan Sharma, director of research at Market Intelligence and Analytics, a division of CRISIL Ltd, has also seen a significant rise over the years as consumption of ready-to-eat snacks and items in the processed food segment has gone up. "With the impact on yield, the prices are expected to remain firm, but in the coming months we will see fresh potato coming in from the cold storage and that should moderate the prices," Sharma told Informist earlier this month.

Even though the government expects the supply of kharif potatoes from Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and parts of Karnataka will help bring down prices in the near term, agriculture experts say that may not help.

"New crop arrivals are expected only in Oct-Nov. Any mountain crop that comes in before that has a specific market and caters to the special demand for pahadi aloo," NCML's Gupta said.

Potatoes can be grown only under moderately cool conditions. In the hills of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the spring crop is sown from Jan-Feb, while the summer crop is sown in May. In Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, the spring crop is sown in January, while the main crop is sown in the first week of October. In the states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka, the kharif crop is sown around the end of June and the rabi crop is sown from mid Oct-Nov. The potato crop is harvested after 3-4 months of planting.  End

 

Edited by Tanima Banerjee

 

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