India potato prices: how to read Agmarknet, and what the record shows
India grew 58.1 million tonnes of potatoes in 2024-25 (3rd Advance Estimate, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare). Its mandi prices are reported daily on the government's Agmarknet portal. This page explains the price rows and the yearly rhythm, and lists dated reference points. For today's price, use Agmarknet itself.
Last updated:
Historical references only. Nothing on these pages is a live quote or trading advice. Each page names the official source where current prices are published.
What Agmarknet shows
Agmarknet (agmarknet.gov.in) is the Government of India's agricultural marketing information portal, run under the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare. Mandi (wholesale market) officials report the day's trade for each commodity, and the portal publishes it by state, district, market and variety.
A potato row normally carries a minimum price, a maximum price and a modal price, all in rupees per quintal, together with the day's arrivals. One quintal is 100 kg, so Rs 1,000 per quintal is Rs 10 per kg.
- Modal price: the price at which most of the day's trade took place. It is the figure most people quote, and it is more stable than the maximum.
- Minimum to maximum spread: a wide spread on one day usually means mixed grades or varieties are being traded together.
- Arrivals: a price on very small arrivals says little. Read price and arrivals together.
- Variety and grade: a Kufri Pukhraj row and a cold-store Kufri Jyoti row are different goods. Compare like with like.
- What the price is not: a mandi price is a wholesale price. It is not the farmgate price (after commission, loading and transport) and not the retail price.
The seasonal pattern
Most of India's potato crop is the rabi crop of the Indo-Gangetic plains, planted in October and November and dug in February and March. Arrivals peak at harvest and prices are at their weakest then, so growers and traders put the bulk of the crop into cold storage and sell through the following months.
The Uttar Pradesh state profile (ICAR-CPRI, UP agricultural extension and field reports) records the scale of this. Only 15 to 20 percent of the crop is normally sold at harvest in February and March, and in a normal year 80 to 85 percent of the crop goes into cold stores.
2024-25 shows the risk of storing for a price rise. UP growers reported putting about 99 percent of the crop into cold stores against the usual 80 to 85 percent. Cold-store rent was Rs 110 per bag, and sales at Rs 125 to 225 per bag went entirely to pay cold-store owners (Potatoes in Uttar Pradesh profile; ICAR-CPRI and field reports, 2024-25 season).
West Bengal, which processes under 5 percent of its potatoes and sells mainly fresh, shows the same pressure from the other side: a record crop of about 150 lakh tonnes in 2024-25 outran storage and demand, and state governments have at times banned potato movement to hold down local prices (West Bengal Agriculture Department market data, as compiled in Potatopedia's state profile).
Reference points by year
Potatopedia does not republish the Agmarknet daily series, which changes every day and by market. The table gives two kinds of dated reference: the FAOSTAT producer price index for India (an annual, national measure) and individual state-level price records from the profiles.
| Year | Reference point | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Producer price index 77.1 (2014-16 = 100) | FAOSTAT producer prices |
| 2015 | Producer price index 100.4 | FAOSTAT producer prices |
| 2020 | Producer price index 118.7 | FAOSTAT producer prices |
| 2022 | Producer price index 138.4 | FAOSTAT producer prices |
| 2024 | Producer price index 154.2, about double the 2010 level | FAOSTAT producer prices |
| 2024-25 | West Bengal, Kufri Pukhraj at about Rs 540 per quintal (Rs 5.4 per kg) against input costs above Rs 3,000 per bigha | West Bengal Agriculture Department market data |
| 2024-25 | Uttar Pradesh, farmgate as low as Rs 4 per kg against a break-even near Rs 5 per kg | UP profile; ICAR-CPRI and field reports |
FAOSTAT's index is an annual national average and moves differently from daily mandi prices. State records are single-market observations, not national averages.
On contract prices, a published agricultural-economics comparison found that growers under contract farming received Rs 390 per quintal against Rs 177 for non-contract growers in the study it covered, with net return over operational cost more than five times higher on the contract farms (Rs 62,982 against Rs 11,882 per hectare). The study is specific to its place and period, so read it as direction, not as a rule.
Checking today's price
- Open agmarknet.gov.in and choose the commodity group Vegetables, then Potato.
- Select the state, district and market, then the date range.
- Read the modal price with the arrivals column, and note the variety.
- For several markets at once, use the open-data version of the mandi series published on data.gov.in.
The portal's layout changes from time to time. If a step above no longer matches, the commodity, state and market selectors remain the way in.
Sources
- Agmarknet, Government of India — live mandi prices
- FAOSTAT, producer prices (potatoes), India, 2010 to 2024
- Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, 3rd Advance Estimates 2024-25 — 58.1 million tonnes
- ICAR-CPRI, UP state agricultural extension and field reports — 2024-25 season, Uttar Pradesh
- West Bengal Agriculture Department, market data — 2024-25