Why toor dal prices move: reading the Vidarbha arrival calendar

Buyers who deal with us for the first time often ask why a rate moved four hundred rupees in a week when nothing visible happened. Nothing visible to them, anyway. Tur is a single-season crop with a narrow arrival window, and once you know the shape of that window most of the movement stops looking random.

The season, in order

• June to July — sowing. Rainfall at the start of the monsoon decides the acreage. A weak or late start here shows up in prices eight months later, long before anyone can measure the actual crop.
• August to October — growing. The crop is in the field and the market is trading on expectation. This is where rumour has the most influence and the least information to work with.
• November to January — arrivals. The new crop reaches the mandis. Volumes peak, quality is at its best, and prices are usually at their softest. This is when mills with their own storage buy.
• February to May — the drawdown. Arrivals thin out. Whoever holds stock sets the tone. Prices generally firm through this stretch.

That is the base rhythm. Three other things sit on top of it.

Government stock policy

Pulses are politically sensitive in India because they are a staple protein. Buffer stock releases, stock-holding limits and import duty changes can move the market faster and harder than any crop news, and they are announced rather than forecast. A buyer who is not watching policy is only watching half the market.

Import parity

India imports pigeon pea from Myanmar and East Africa. When the landed cost of imported material drops below the domestic rate, it caps the domestic price regardless of how the local crop looks. When it rises, the ceiling lifts. Domestic and import prices are not two separate markets; they are one market with two sources.

Weather at the wrong moment

Unseasonal rain during arrival season does two things at once: it interrupts the physical flow of grain to the mandis, and it raises the moisture of what does arrive, which lowers the usable quality. Supply and quality tighten together, which is why weather events during arrivals move prices more sharply than weather events during growing.

What this means if you are buying

If you buy regularly, the arrival window is your friend. Contracting through November to January, when the crop is best and the market is softest, gets you better material at a better number than buying reactively in March.

If you buy occasionally, the practical advice is simpler: do not treat a single day's rate as the market. Ask what it was a fortnight ago and where the arrivals are running. Any mill worth dealing with will tell you, because a buyer who understands why the number moved is a much easier buyer to deal with than one who thinks they are being worked.

Why we publish our rates

Most of this trade quotes on request and hopes you do not compare. We publish our working rates on this site and stamp them with the time they were set, which means you can watch how they move over a season and form your own view. It also means we have to be honest about it, which keeps us sharp.