Going nuts!

Groundnuts have never had it so good! When the objective of their creation was to be devoured, they could not have been rushing any faster towards achieving this aim. At least in India.

This humble nut is fast becoming more popular than the expensive cashews and almonds and other nuts, as table nuts in the form of savouries, as an accompaniment with liquor and snack bars. And this phenomenon of peanut becoming table snack is not restricted to India alone, even all over the world, peanut rules!

But of all this things, this is having a cascading effect on the edible oil sector. In India,  groundnut oil is used pretty extensively in cooking and this fancy for making peanuts into a snack has left very little for making oil, making it today one of the most expensive cooking oil in India.

And this is good news for the farmers, who have been cutting down on groundnut sowing due to falling prices; so much so the prices were not even enough to recover the minimum support price. But with demand now outstripping supply, more land is expected to come under groundnut cultivation. Gujarat is the largest producer in India, followed by AP and Tamil Nadu.