What an Indian agri export price actually is, and how to read one

Education only. This is not trading or investment advice, and nothing here is an offer to sell.

If you import spices, herbs, millets or oils from India, the first question is usually "what does this cost right now?" Public answers do exist, but they are spread across UN Comtrade, the Government of India's Agmarknet mandi dashboards, and seller listings. Each of those sources measures something different.

The India Agri Export Price Index (https://nidhi-bhai.github.io/india-agri-export-prices/) is a free page I publish that brings those sources together each week for 18 products, priced in USD/kg. This article explains what the numbers mean and how an importer, trader or analyst can use them without over-reading them.

The 18 products

The index covers:

• Herbs and leaf powders: moringa leaf powder, ashwagandha root powder, neem leaf powder, curry leaf powder, indigo leaf powder and wheatgrass powder.
• Spices: turmeric (finger and powder).
• Sugar: jaggery powder.
• Millets: ragi, bajra, foxtail, the small millets (kodo, little, proso, barnyard and browntop), and khapli (emmer) wheat and atta.
• Oils: cold-pressed groundnut oil, cold-pressed coconut oil, karanja (pongamia) oil and moringa seed oil.
• Roots: dried vetiver (khus) root.

For wheatgrass powder, the page says plainly that there is "no reliable public price yet". It leaves the cell empty rather than guessing.

Three kinds of number, and why they differ

Every figure on the page is labelled with its type, source and date.

1. Official export unit values (UN Comtrade). India reports its exports each month by HS customs code. Dividing the FOB value in USD by the net weight in kg gives a unit value: the average price of everything shipped under that code in that month.

• These figures come with a lag of about 2–4 months. The 27 Oct 2026 snapshot shows July 2026 as the latest month.
• Many products share one code. HS 121190, for example, covers moringa, ashwagandha, neem, curry leaf, vetiver and hundreds of other herbs. The index marks such series as pooled. A pooled number tells you about the market, not the price of the exact product you want.

2. Mandi prices (Agmarknet). These are daily all-India average wholesale prices from regulated markets, published in INR per quintal (100 kg). The index converts them to USD/kg at the ECB reference rate.

• They are raw, farm-gate commodity prices, recorded before cleaning, grading, grinding, packing, testing and port costs. So they sit well below export prices.
• The page also shows each day's arrivals. Low arrivals mean a thin, noisy price. In this snapshot, ragi had only 0.1 t of arrivals on the reported day and coconut oil 0.25 t.

3. Estimates. For powders and other niche items there is no official price series. For these the index compiles ranges from public seller offers, rate cards and trade reports, and links each source.

• These are asking prices, not transaction prices.
• Some estimates rest on very little evidence, and the page says so. The khapli figure (2.58 USD/kg) comes from one emmer-flour shipment, which the data file calls "a single data point, not a market price". Several millet ranges are cited from July 2026 and are marked "older".

A worked example: turmeric

Turmeric (HS 091030) is one of the cleaner series because it has its own code. From the 27 Oct 2026 snapshot:

• Export unit value, Jul 2026: 1.853 USD/kg FOB. India shipped 13,489 t worth USD 24.99 million that month.
• 12-month range of monthly unit values (Aug 2025 – Jul 2026): 1.70–2.29 USD/kg. The high was December 2025.
• Mandi price, 25 Oct 2026: INR 19,500 per quintal, about 2.05 USD/kg. Arrivals that day were only 2.0 t, so treat that figure as thin.
• Destinations in 2025: unit values ranged from about 1.30 USD/kg (Bangladesh) to 3.56 USD/kg (USA). That spread most likely reflects differences in grade, form and buyer requirements, not one "India price".

The takeaway is that a single headline number hides a wide range. The destination table is often more useful than the average, because it shows what buyers in markets like yours have paid on average.

How importers can use it

• Sanity-check a quote. If an offer sits far outside both the Comtrade range and the public-offer range, ask why. The answer may be grade, certification, packing or freight terms. Note that the index covers conventional grade only.
• Watch direction, not just level. Comtrade's monthly series shows whether average export unit values are rising or falling, even with the lag.
• Separate raw material from finished product. The gap between the mandi price and the export price is roughly the processing, compliance and logistics cost.
• Download and build your own view. Everything is available as latest.csv, latest.json and an append-only history.csv, under CC BY 4.0. The history file started with the 27 Oct 2026 snapshot, so it holds one week of data for now and grows by one snapshot a week.

Caveats worth repeating

• Pooled HS codes are context, not product prices. On the home page, neem leaf powder (4.056) and indigo leaf powder (3.803) show pooled-code values. Karanja oil and moringa seed oil both show 6.227 USD/kg because they share HS 151590.
• Comtrade lags by months. Mandi data is daily but thin for niche items.
• Estimates are seller asks compiled from a handful of public sources, and some of them are old.
• The cold-pressed coconut oil estimate (2.70 USD/kg) comes from a general coconut-oil FOB Cochin index for August 2026. It is not specific to cold-pressed oil.
• USD/INR conversions use the ECB reference rate for one day.

Who publishes it

The index is published by Nidhi Farms, a sourcing firm (a trader, not a grower) in Andhra Pradesh, India, supplying conventional grade only. To be transparent: Nidhi Farms also takes quote requests, and the page links to them. The reference data itself is free and open, and corrections are welcome at [e-mail]. The methodology is at https://nidhi-bhai.github.io/india-agri-export-prices/methodology.html.