Soriya and Lamka are among scores of farmers in Gujarat for whom fennel, which is consumed as a mouth freshener and flavouring agent in beverages, curries and pickles, has become the flavour of the current Rabi season.

With farmers having been besotted by the aroma and prices of the spice seed, the sowing area of the crop in this Rabi season has trebled in Gujarat, which happens to be the largest producer of fennel in India.

According to the latest data released by the Directorate of Agriculture of Gujarat, farmers completed sowing fennel in 1,32,643 hectares (ha). This is a new record of the sowing area of the crop in Gujarat, the state with the largest sowing area of this crop in the country.

The 1.32 lakh hectare (lh) of sowing in the 2023-24 Rabi season is three times higher than the previous three years’ average sowing area of 43,287 ha. It is also 2.25 times higher as compared to the 5,900 ha recorded in the 2022-23 Rabi season. In terms of percentage, fennel acreage has registered the highest growth among all major rabi crops of Gujarat.

“Last year, the price of fennel touched Rs 25,000 per quintal (100 kg make a quintal) in Unjha. That was almost three times higher as compared to the average price in previous years, which was between Rs 5,000 and 7,500. I harvested an average of eight quintals of wheat per bigha and sold it at Rs 2,500 per quintal. But at price levels seen in 2023, fennel is a very attractive option,” 29-year-old Hindu Soriya says. “I reduced my wheat acreage and went for fennel as I know that being an essential item, the government won’t allow wheat prices to rise beyond a certain level but it won’t interfere in the fennel market as this spice seed is not an essential item,” he adds.

Layka is also guided by a similar logic. “Prices of inputs like seeds and fertiliser are increasing every year, wiping off any gains that I can make by prices of commodities like wheat increasing marginally. In such a scenario, crops like fennel and jeera in a good crop year can make the difference for sharecroppers like me,” says the 33-year-old farmer with no formal education.

Sitaram Patel, a trader at the agricultural produce market committee (APMC) in Unjha, the largest market of fennel and jeera in Asia, says fennel prices shot up in the 2023 Rabi marketing season amid low supply due to acreage dropping to just 36,783 ha in 2021-22 and global demand reviving post the pandemic shock.

“The crop in 2023 was hardly 12 to 13 lakh bags (each containing 55 kg of fennel) whereas demand in the domestic market and overseas market was robust. China imported Indian fennel aggressively. So did Bangladesh and Gulf countries. This meant prices of fennel rallied from April to August, the peak marketing season,” said the trader.

The prices have been on a downward curve since September and have come down to around Rs 7,500. Cumin prices too have slid to Rs 30,000 from Rs 62,000. This is still higher as compared to the 2022 Rabi marketing season. This meant that the spice seed inflation remained elevated. It was 19.69 percent in December.

Fennel is cultivated in small pockets of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh also.
Globally, Sudan and Egypt are other cultivators but India controls the global export market, Patel said.

Incidentally, jeera acreage too has recorded a 60 per cent increase this year and gone past 5.60 lh in Gujarat this year, a new record for the state. It has increased marginally in Rajasthan also where it stood at 6.90 lh as of January 8, the latest data available from the Rajasthan horticulture department shows.

Fennel is a long-duration crop, which is sown in October-November and harvested after around 150 days in March-April. On the other hand, jeera and wheat are 100 to 120 day crops, which allow farmers to sow a third crop of the year at the beginning of the summer. However, unlike jeera, fennel is an assured crop and the higher price has meant that some farmers have sown fennel as an insurance for jeera.

“Fungal diseases can wipe out entire fields of jeera, leaving not a grain to harvest. Being an extremely weather-sensitive crop, jeera’s yields can vary a great deal, from around three quintals to 15 quintals per hectare. But one can expect to harvest an average of 20 quintals of fennel per hectare and it can go up to even 31 quintals,” says Vijay Soriya, another farmer from Butvada who has sown jeera in 200 bighas (32 ha) and fennel in 55 bighas (8.8 ha).

Data suggests that the increase in fennel acreage has come at the cost of wheat and gram (chana). The sowing area of these two crops stands at 12.20 lh and 6.29 lh, which are respectively 93.55 per cent and 70 per cent of their previous three year’s average, the Gujarat government data shows.

Within Gujarat, Surendranagar has sown fennel in 69,700 ha, topping other districts. It is followed by Morbi (14,800 ha) and Kutch (10,800 ha). Overall, 11 districts of Saurashtra account for 93,000 ha of the state’s total fennel sowing area of 1.32 lh.

Six districts of the north Gujarat region have reported fennel sowing in 25,600 ha. “The advantage of fennel is that it is easy to grow and harvest,” says Popat Patel, a research scientist at the Sardarkrushinagar Dantiwada Agricultural University’s Seed Spices Research Station (SSRS) at Jagudan in Mehsana district.

Vijay Soriya agrees. “Though fennel requires an average of 12 irrigations as compared to four for jeera and seven to eight for wheat, the average per hectare cultivation cost of fennel is around Rs 9,000 only as compared to Rs 30,000 for jeera,” he says.