Guar – A crop fetching high income to farmers

Abstract

Guar is the first agriculture commodity registered on NCDEX.
Earlier its prices used to be very low, i.e. ` 2,000-3,000/q. But because of its increasing industrial uses particularly in oil industry and demand in international market the prices of guar suddenly soared up to the level of Rupees 30,000/q in 2011- 12 which were merely Rupees 4,000/q in 2010-11. However, an embargo on guar seed guar gum future trading for last one year has resulted in price distortion. The prevailing market prices of guar seed is around Rupees 10,000/q and frocking market in USA and Europe seems to increase so the government should immediately lift the ban on future trading of guar and its
products. This will motivate the farmers for crop diversification to
grow more industrial crops and therefore transfer the benefits of
higher prices to the farmers in distress particularly of dry regions
which will in turn give a boost to the national economy.