How to read mandi prices and decide when to sell
Modal price, arrivals and the spread between them tell you more than the headline rate. A practical guide to reading mandi data before you load the truck.
Mandi price data is public, updated daily, and almost universally misread. Most farmers look at one number — the maximum price — and conclude the market is strong. That number is often a single premium lot and tells you very little about what your produce will fetch. Reading the data properly takes about two minutes and regularly changes the decision.
The three numbers that matter
Every mandi report publishes minimum, maximum and modal price, along with arrivals measured in quintals or tonnes. The modal price is the rate at which the largest volume actually changed hands. It is the only one of the three that describes the typical transaction, and it is the number you should anchor on.
| Figure | What it means | How to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum | Poorest quality lot sold that day | Your floor if grading is weak or moisture is high |
| Maximum | Best lot, often a single premium consignment | Aspirational only; ignore for planning |
| Modal | Rate of the largest traded volume | Your realistic expectation for average quality |
| Arrivals | Total quantity reaching the mandi | The leading indicator — read it before price |
Arrivals move before price does
Price is the lagging number. Arrivals are the leading one. When arrivals at your mandi climb sharply for three or four consecutive days, price almost always softens within the week, because traders know supply is building and have no reason to bid up. Conversely, a run of thin arrivals firms the rate even when nothing else has changed.
This is the single most useful habit to build: check arrivals first, price second. A farmer watching arrivals can often sell two or three days ahead of a slide that everyone else notices only when the rate has already dropped.
The spread between nearby mandis
Rates for the same commodity routinely differ by ₹100–₹400 per quintal between mandis 40 or 50 km apart. That gap is worth chasing only if it clears your transport cost, and the arithmetic is straightforward: multiply the price difference by your quintals, then subtract hire charges, loading, unloading and your own day. A ₹200 spread on 30 quintals is ₹6,000 gross — comfortably worth a 50 km trip. The same ₹200 on 4 quintals is ₹800, which a tractor-trolley round trip will consume entirely.
When holding stock makes sense, and when it does not
Holding for a better price is a real strategy with real costs. Storage carries three: physical loss to moisture, pests and rodents, typically 2–5% over a few months in ordinary conditions; the interest on money you have not yet received; and the risk that the price falls further. Against that sits the historical tendency for rates to recover from the post-harvest trough as arrivals thin.
- Holding usually makes sense when arrivals are at a seasonal peak and your storage is genuinely dry and pest-proof.
- It rarely makes sense if you are servicing a loan whose interest exceeds the price recovery you are hoping for.
- It almost never makes sense for high-moisture produce, where quality loss outruns any price gain.
None of this requires special tools. Daily mandi data is published by the government and mirrored in the Miraitu mandi section. Two minutes with arrivals, modal price and last year's comparable week will beat a rumour from the mandi gate almost every time.