Context: As the novel coronavirus has forced Indians to eat more home-cooked food — eateries. On the one hand, imports of palm oil have fallen by almost 40% year-on-year during April-June, oils directly used in home kitchens have reported no decline in consumption. One example of oils faring well in lockdown India is groundnut.
About Oil seed cultivation

• Oilseed cultivation is undertaken across the country in about 26.00 million ha, covering 72% under rainfed areas and producing around 30.00 million tonnes of oilseeds.
• Nine oilseeds are the primary sources of vegetable oil in India. Among nine Major oilseeds are Soybean (39%), Groundnut (26%) and Rapeseed-Mustard (24%), contribute more than 88% of total oilseeds production in the country.
• However, in terms of vegetable oil production Rapeseed (31%) Mustard (26%), Soybean and Groundnut (25%) contributes majorly.

Diminishing importance given to groundnut oil

• Till the mid-seventies, groundnut accounted for over 50% of India’s edible oil consumption. But today, more than half of the country’s groundnut kernels are used for table consumption or exported, leaving little for oil extraction.
• Annual groundnut oil consumption in India is at 4 lt, which is hardly 2% of the country’s edible oil demand and below even other indigenous oils such as cottonseed and rice bran.
• However, that situation could change this year with farmers expanding the area sown under groundnut. Groundnut acreage under the oilseed in the ongoing kharif planting season is 45.45 lh, up from last year’s 30.54 lh.

Reason for comeback of groundnut

• One reason is prices expected to remain firm, supported by rising home consumption of the oil post-Covid and steady export demand for the kernels.
• Production of groundnut oilseed in 2019-20 was 93.47 lakh tonnes (lt), more than 2018-19’s 67.27 lt and the highest since 2013-14.
• Also, in 2019-20, India exported 6.64 lt of groundnuts compared to 4.89 lt previous fiscal, to Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and China.

Reason for the comeback of groundnut oil in Gujarat

• In Saurashtra, where the major groundnut-cultivating districts are Rajkot, Junagadh, Jamnagar and Dwarka, the competing crop is cotton. Saurashtra farmers this time have sown less area under cotton, as against groundnut.
• For farmers, groundnut can be harvested in 90-110 days by October-November, whereas a full cotton crop cycle can take up to 180 days. The shorter duration gives the flexibility to plant wheat, chana (chickpea), jeera (cumin) or coriander during the rabi winter-spring season.
• Also, not only are groundnut cultivation costs lower, their stems are very good fodder for cattle. And Yields per hectare are similar both for kapas (raw unginned cotton) and groundnut-in-shell.
• Regular MSP-based procurement by government agencies has boosted farmers’ confidence to plant groundnut. The procurement of National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) for groundnut from Gujarat is also significant. 
• Gujarat is also the India’s largest cotton producer. But procurement of kapas through the Cotton Corporation of India hasn’t been on the scale of groundnut purchases undertaken by NAFED.