From The Desk Of CEO

First Quarter (Q1- April – June) of new Financial Year 2025- 26 has been over. As forecasted by Monsoon Bhawan earlier, this year monsoon was quite normal in almost all parts of India and distribution of rainfall was also very even, unlike past 3 years. Farmers can expect a boom year of production due to this timely rainfall in most important cultivation season – Kharif – in India.

As agri input business is dependent on multiple factors, the factor of ‘Demand Supply Ratio’ is one of the key factors which set sentiments, positive or negative, in farmer’s mind. Due to the Geo–political tensions and pressures arisen recently, export & import with many countries have been greatly reduced. For Example, Bangladesh used to import huge amount of rice from India and India used to import huge amount of Hilsa fish from Bangladesh. Both have been impacted in negative fashion due to new geo–political stress arisen between these two neighbouring countries.

Similar situation happened with Pakistan. Import – export has been totally banned between these two countries in the Western Front of India. 

Russia-Ukraine War & Israel-Iran War have created immense tension in the Middle East and in the Western Front of Asian countries. This has impacted sea routes, air routes, road routes and all have driven a steep escalation of prices as well as availabilities of commodities. The new tariff rates imposed by USA will also trigger to hike the price escalation of many commodities.

Basmati Export to Middle East countries has almost come down to an absolute halt and thus has made a marked difference in the demand of Basmati segment paddy as compared to last year.

Due to the change in lifestyle, people have already reduced carbohydrate intake and in India paddy being the number one source of carbohydrate, it has been impacted greatly. People have modified their food habits and even the population of India is over 140 crores, there is surplus paddy stocks in this country. Rice mill owners have stopped purchasing paddy from the farmers as there is very low demand of coarse paddy now. This has pulled down the paddy price by Rs. 4-5/Kg as compared to last year during this time.

As the production, procurement and processing cost of seeds have been increased greatly in last couple of years, seed companies were compelled to rise their price of seeds and as farmers did not have enough fund this year, they opted for their ‘Farm Saved Seeds’ (FSS). This has again triggered a dent in sales in paddy seeds in this Kharif season.

Mushrooming of seed companies without having proper Trade Mark Certification, R&D, Registration, ISO Certifications is leading to unhealthy practices of counterfeiting and copying popular Trade Mark brands in deceptive manners in a great extent. Stringent vigilance is required by the Govt. Agencies to stop these unscrupulous activities.

Ramnagar Seed Farm Pvt Ltd. will take firm actions against the perpetrators who are counterfeiting company’s different Trade Mark and Copyrights.

In general, there will be huge sales return from the market as except rainfall, all other factors were not good and congenial for a healthy market.

I wish Happy Guru Purnima to all the trade partners and colleagues!