Ranking 23 crops by how much reaches India’s mandis and how much their prices move, using Agmarknet’s state-wise data to October 2026. Paddy and wheat make up almost half of all arrivals and move about 2.5–3% in a typical month. Onion, potato and tomato are nearly as large but move two to eight times as much, in every state.
India’s Biggest Mandi Crops Have the Steadiest Prices. Its Vegetables Swing Two to Eight Times as Much.
Two earlier pieces on this site looked at maize trading for ethanol plants and at how maize and rice prices vary by state and season. This one widens the lens to 23 crops: seven cereals, five pulses, three oilseeds and cotton, four vegetables and three spices. For each crop and state it asks two questions. How much reaches the mandis? And how much does the price move from one month to the next?
How much to trust it. All figures come from Agmarknet’s public dashboard API: monthly weighted-average prices in rupees per quintal and arrivals in tonnes, by state, January 2019 to 23 October 2026. Arrivals are totals over the past 12 months. Volatility is measured as the typical monthly price move, the median of the absolute month-on-month price change from January 2023, so a 3% figure means that in a typical month the price rose or fell by about 3%. The median is used deliberately: Agmarknet contains occasional misreported months, and a standard deviation let a single bad month in Tamil Nadu’s tomato series swamp everything else. State-months with under 50 tonnes of arrivals are dropped, and a crop is shown for a state only with at least 24 monthly price changes and 5,000 tonnes of arrivals in the past year. Agmarknet’s coverage widened when its new portal went live in November 2025, which raises recent arrivals for every crop. Prices mix varieties and grades within a crop. Arrivals measure what is reported at regulated markets, not production: crops sold mostly outside mandis, or procured directly by government agencies, are undercounted, while states that procure through mandis show large volumes.
Volume and volatility, crop by crop
The chart splits cleanly. The crops that fill India’s mandis by weight, paddy, wheat and maize, are also among the steadiest, moving 2.5–3.1% in a typical month. Pulses, oilseeds and cotton sit in the same band, with cotton the steadiest of all at 1.8%. The four vegetables sit far to the right. Onion and potato each draw more than 16 million tonnes a year, as much as maize, but onion moves 13.5% a month and potato 6.2%. Tomato and garlic move 20.4% and 16.0%. Spices fall in between, at 3.8–5.5%.
| Rank by arrivals | Crop | Arrivals, last 12 months (million tonnes) | Typical monthly price move (%) | Rank by volatility (1 = most volatile) | Price range, dearest vs cheapest months (%) | Latest price (Rs/qtl) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Paddy | 36.84 | 3.1 | 13 | 29 | 2,682 |
| 2 | Wheat | 31.79 | 2.5 | 18 | 27 | 2,653 |
| 3 | Onion | 17.23 | 13.5 | 3 | 301 | 3,377 |
| 4 | Potato | 16.33 | 6.2 | 4 | 200 | 721 |
| 5 | Maize | 16.15 | 2.9 | 15 | 35 | 2,202 |
| 6 | Soybean | 5.85 | 2.5 | 19 | 66 | 6,360 |
| 7 | Tomato | 4.91 | 20.4 | 1 | 304 | 1,671 |
| 8 | Mustard | 3.77 | 2.3 | 20 | 54 | 7,890 |
| 9 | Rice | 3.59 | 2.3 | 21 | 33 | 4,657 |
| 10 | Cotton | 3.45 | 1.8 | 23 | 31 | 8,894 |
| 11 | Chana | 2.32 | 2.6 | 17 | 42 | 7,158 |
| 12 | Garlic | 1.75 | 16.0 | 2 | 380 | 8,531 |
| 13 | Groundnut | 1.74 | 3.1 | 14 | 46 | 7,641 |
| 14 | Bajra | 1.55 | 3.2 | 12 | 23 | 2,350 |
| 15 | Tur | 1.39 | 3.4 | 10 | 69 | 9,266 |
| 16 | Moong | 1.30 | 3.3 | 11 | 28 | 8,274 |
| 17 | Dry chilli | 1.10 | 5.5 | 6 | 97 | 24,383 |
| 18 | Urad | 0.53 | 3.5 | 9 | 45 | 7,615 |
| 19 | Jeera | 0.50 | 3.8 | 8 | 200 | 23,225 |
| 20 | Turmeric | 0.48 | 4.2 | 7 | 102 | 17,541 |
| 21 | Jowar | 0.40 | 6.0 | 5 | 43 | 4,040 |
| 22 | Masur | 0.32 | 2.2 | 22 | 33 | 7,960 |
| 23 | Ragi | 0.13 | 2.8 | 16 | 41 | 3,517 |
Price range = 95th-percentile monthly price over 5th-percentile, January 2023 to October 2026, minus one. Latest = October 2026 to the 23rd. Paddy and rice overlap: paddy is milled into rice. Source: Agmarknet; this blog’s calculations.
The price-range column, comparing a crop’s dearest months with its cheapest after trimming the extremes, tells the same story at a longer horizon. Wheat’s dearest months since 2023 ran 27% above its cheapest. Tomato’s and onion’s ran about four times higher, and garlic’s nearly five times higher. Some steady crops still had large ranges because their prices trended. Soybean’s 66% range and mustard’s 54% mostly reflect prices drifting over the period rather than month-to-month churn.
Which crops fill each state’s mandis
| State | Arrivals, 23 crops (million tonnes) | Largest crop (Mt, monthly move %) | Second (Mt, monthly move %) | Third (Mt, monthly move %) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uttar Pradesh | 33.1 | Potato (10.0, 7.4) | Wheat (7.8, 1.4) | Paddy (7.0, 2.4) |
| Madhya Pradesh | 33.0 | Wheat (10.9, 2.1) | Maize (7.4, 4.3) | Soybean (3.9, 2.5) |
| Chhattisgarh | 16.1 | Paddy (15.2, 1.8) | Maize (0.5, 2.4) | Tomato (0.2, 29.1) |
| Maharashtra | 15.1 | Onion (8.0, 17.6) | Soybean (1.2, 2.1) | Potato (0.8, 6.6) |
| Karnataka | 9.9 | Maize (2.2, 2.4) | Paddy (2.0, 3.3) | Rice (1.6, 6.9) |
| Rajasthan | 9.3 | Wheat (2.2, 2.3) | Mustard (2.0, 2.9) | Paddy (1.1, 5.9) |
| Gujarat | 6.5 | Onion (1.2, 14.8) | Wheat (0.8, 2.3) | Cotton (0.7, 2.5) |
| Haryana | 3.6 | Paddy (1.8, 4.9) | Potato (0.8, 15.2) | Mustard (0.2, 2.3) |
| Telangana | 3.0 | Paddy (0.8, 2.2) | Dry chilli (0.5, 10.2) | Onion (0.4, 14.6) |
| Andhra Pradesh | 2.3 | Tomato (0.6, 34.4) | Dry chilli (0.5, 3.0) | Cotton (0.5, 2.0) |
| West Bengal | 1.6 | Potato (0.6, 6.8) | Rice (0.5, 0.8) | Onion (0.2, 14.2) |
| Delhi | 1.5 | Potato (0.5, 8.3) | Onion (0.4, 14.9) | Tomato (0.3, 21.6) |
Arrivals November 2025 to October 2026. Monthly move = median absolute month-on-month price change since January 2023. Source: Agmarknet; this blog’s calculations.
Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh dominate, with about 33 million tonnes each across these crops. Uttar Pradesh’s biggest flows are potato, wheat and paddy; Madhya Pradesh’s are wheat, maize and soybean. Chhattisgarh’s 15 million tonnes of paddy likely reflect the state’s large-scale paddy purchases at the support price being recorded as arrivals. Maharashtra is the onion state, with 8 million tonnes. Delhi appears because Azadpur and the city’s other terminal markets receive vegetables from across the north, not because it grows them.
Volatility state by state
The crop matters far more than the state. Tomato moved at least 18.8% a month in every state shown, and 40.7% in Telangana, 34.4% in Andhra Pradesh and 32.3% in West Bengal. Onion was steadiest in Uttar Pradesh at 10.3% and most volatile in Madhya Pradesh at 21.6%. Maharashtra, which supplies the largest share of the country’s onion arrivals, ran at 17.6%. At the other end, wheat in Uttar Pradesh moved 1.4% in a typical month, paddy in West Bengal 0.5% and rice in West Bengal 0.8%. These are crops that the government buys at minimum support prices and holds in public stocks, which helps anchor their price.
Within the steady crops a few state readings stand out. Maize in Haryana moved 8.4% a month against 2.4–4.9% in the main producing states, a small market with patchy reporting. Paddy moved 6.8% in Madhya Pradesh and 5.9% in Rajasthan, against about 2% in Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, states that procure large volumes of paddy. Tur moved 8.7% in Telangana against 1.7% in Uttar Pradesh.
Why the two groups differ
Part of the explanation is visible in the crops themselves. Those with steady prices share two traits: they store for months or years, and most are bought by the government at a support price or held in public stocks. Wheat and paddy have both. Pulses and oilseeds store well, and their prices are steered by import duties and periodic government purchases. The volatile crops cannot be held for long. Tomato lasts days, and onion and potato a few months at best, even in cold or ventilated storage. A late monsoon, a heatwave or a glut in one producing region therefore reaches the price within weeks, with no stock to absorb it.
What it means
For a processor or trader, the ranking sorts crops into two kinds of business. High-volume, low-volatility crops such as wheat, paddy, maize, soybean and mustard suit models built on buying in season and storing, provided the seasonal spread beats the cost of carry. The earlier state-wise maize and rice analysis found that for those two grains it usually did not. High-volume, high-volatility crops such as onion, potato and tomato reward speed instead: sourcing from whichever state is harvesting, moving produce quickly, and contracting ahead with growers or buyers to share the price risk. For policy, the gap between the two groups suggests where price support has worked as intended, and where storage and processing capacity, rather than procurement, would do more to steady prices.
Sources and method. Agmarknet dashboard API (agmarknet.gov.in; endpoint api.agmarknet.gov.in/v1/dashboard-data, state-wise price and arrival report), 23 commodities, January 2019 to 23 October 2026: Wheat, Paddy (Common), Rice, Maize, Jowar, Bajra, Ragi, Bengal Gram (chana), Red Gram/Tur, Green Gram (moong), Black Gram (urad), Lentil (masur), Soyabean, Mustard, Groundnut, Cotton, Onion, Potato, Tomato, Garlic, Dry Chillies, Turmeric and Cumin Seed (jeera). Weighted-average prices in Rs per quintal and arrivals in metric tonnes, as published. All-India prices, the typical monthly move, the trimmed price range and the rankings are this blog’s calculations, available as a spreadsheet with every step as a formula. eNAM trade data was unavailable (its server returned errors) and is not used. This post is AI-assisted analysis of public data, not investment advice.
About this article: Researched, written and edited by Umashankar Triplicane Dwarakanathan, with AI research assistance; every figure is meant to trace to the primary source cited. See the Editorial Policy for how sourcing, AI use and corrections work.
