Today we received some reports from sources in Syria and Turkey informing that cumin harvest is shorter than expected in Turkey and strongly damaged in Syria pushing the prices up.
Apparently there´s no stock left in Syria and the new crop may be of dark color and inferior quality.
Below a bief report from a cumin seed exporter
Cumin seed on the move upwards in the last days.
The crop in Syria has been seriously damaged due to heavy rains when the plant was flowering. This has given as a result a change in colour and a large part of the crop is very dark to even black coloured. 1st grade merchandise will become scarce from Syria this season.
The harvest in Turkey will start in July and all prospects are good untill now although the crop from Turkey will only be around 7 to 8000 M/t with a small current carryover of 1000 M/t.
Currently the prices are fluctuating around the US$ 2.850 FOB Izmir level.
It seems that Syria will work with 2 different price-levels this season and might offer damaged merchandise at cheaper price levels. So buyers should be carefull with Syrian merchandise.
Prices will most likely only become steady when the Turkish crop has been fully harvested by the end of July.
When the total crop Syrian, Iranian and Turkish will be on the market by end of July we are talking about nearly 50.000 M/t of cumin seeds and prices should ease somehow as the increase of the last days just seems to strong.
We advise buyers to take an waiting position, demand will only increase the price-levels more.........