World Status of Sesame

World Sesame Situation

This situation report is intended to provide a historical perspective of sesame in the world.

Market update - September 2008

The world sesame situation in 2008 has made “US grown sesame” of much greater importance for US food companies and world markets in general:

· As a result of changing consumption patterns in Asia and unfavorable weather conditions in several growing areas, the world sesame supply this spring became tighter than anyone in the trade today can remember. These consumption changes will, most probably, continue tight supplies even when favorable weather patterns return.

· Prices, which spiked substantially this spring, have declined yet no one expects that they will return to a point anywhere close to historical levels.

· Of the four major sesame producers, China has moved from a major exporter to the major importer. The US does not allow trade with Sudan. Myanmar prohibits exports in order to increase their domestic vegetable oil supply.

· There is a continuing urban migration by small farmers in these developing countries, leaving fewer and fewer people to harvest sesame for local consumption and for export to world markets.

· “US grown sesame” will greatly increase the reliability and food safety of US sesame supplies. This is of heightened importance after several recent food safety scares in the United States and because of the implementation of further FDA regulations.

· The goal of American farmers securing a 20 percent share of the international sesame seed market should not be difficult within the next few years. At today’s yields that would represent approximately 750,000 acres of US sesame production.

· Twenty percent of this goal would just be replacing US sesame imports. All or most of the balance will be needed to supply the growth in world demand as shown in the previous graph of “World Trade.”

· Sesame provides an excellent opportunity for American farmers.

Background

To understand sesame markets in the world, we must look at production, import and export data from the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found at (http://faostat.fao.org).

Production data is normally updated in January of the following year, i.e., 2007 data becomes available in mid 2008. Trade figures, meaning imports and exports, lag almost two years, i.e., 2006 data will not be available until late 2008. FAO figures are only as good as the data provided by each country and some countries will change their numbers. Data available as of Sep 2008 is shown in the following tables.

Sesame is a minor crop throughout the world, and thus, many countries, such as the US, do not officially collect any production or trade data. The FAO figures are in hectares and metric tons. For US growers we have converted the data to acres (1 acre = 0.4047 hectares) and short tons (2000 lbs = 0.907 metric tons).

Summary

Production, imports, exports and consumption, in thousands of short tons of whole seed, are shown by geographic region in the following table. In these groupings, most of the Middle East is in Asia. Imports rarely match exports in FAO statistics. Most commodity traders believe that the import figures are more accurate, as imports are more closely watched by customs officials.

From this summary we can see that:

· Asia produces 64% of the world's supply of seed and Africa 31% for a total of 95%.

· Very significantly, 28% of the seed produced in the world enters international trade and the amount traded is increasing, indicating a major world market for "US grown sesame."

· Africa's net exports represent 43% of its production.

· While Asia exports 17% of its crop, it imports twice as much as it exports.

· Europe is a major importer.

REGIONAL SESAME PRODUCTION, TRADE, AND CONSUMPTION

(in thousands of short tons of whole seed)
Production CY 2007 - Trade CY 2005

Area	Area Harvested (000 acres)	Production (000 tons)	Imports	Exports	Net Imports (Exports)	Consumption
Area	Area Harvested (000 acres)	Production (000 tons)	(000 tons)	(000 tons)	Net Imports (Exports)	(000 tons)
Asia	11,182	2,397	749	409	340	2,737
Africa	7,273	1,152	39	463	(424)	728
Europe	1	1	145	23	121	122
North America	0	0	54	3	51	51
Central America	257	63	43	57	(14)	49
South America	377	108	5	90	(85)	23
Oceania	0	0	8	0	8	8
World	19,090	3,726	1,042	1,046		3,736

Consumption = Production + Net Trade
Source: UN / FAO

What these numbers do not show is:

· Asia imports oilseed quality sesame from Africa. Most of the exports in Asia are to other Asian countries.

· Most of the seed consumed in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Africa is crushed to produce unrefined, filtered oil.

· Most of the seed consumed in Japan, China, East and Southeast Asia is crushed to produce toasted oil.

· Most of the seed consumed in the Middle East is consumed as tahini, the peanut butter equivalent of sesame.

World sesame production

Of the fourteen countries who are the major producers in the world, as shown in the next table, six are in Asia, seven in Africa and one in Latin America. Together, they account for 84% of the production.

In 2007, there were 19.1 million acres harvested, producing 3.7 million short tons of whole sesame seed for an average yield of 390 lbs/acre. There is a high correlation between yield and the amount of rainfall. Much of the sesame in the world is grown in semi-arid areas where there is very little irrigation.

The paradigm of sesame parallels many minor crops:

· Sesame is not a major crop because there is little research.

· There is little research on sesame because it is not a major crop.

MAJOR SESAME PRODUCERS

(in thousands of short tons of whole seed)
CY 2007

Country	Area Harvested (000 acres)	Production (000 tons)
India	4,324	739
Myanmar	3,954	661
China	1,534	615
Sudan	3,781	287
Uganda	692	185
Ethiopia	544	181
Nigeria	484	110
Paraguay	148	58
Bangladesh	198	55
Tanzania, United Rep of	284	51
Thailand	162	47
Central African Republic	99	44
Egypt	77	41
Pakistan	210	41

World sesame trade

In 2005, there were 1,046 thousand short tons of whole sesame seed reported as exported. The major exporters were:

The sesame areas in the Sudan and Ethiopia are contiguous and when the politics of one of these countries affects trade, the sesame will flow out through the other country.

Either India or the Sudan/Ethiopia could be the leader in exports in any given year, depending on the amount of rain in each country.

Parts of China do the exporting while other parts do the major importing. Oil grade sesame is imported while food grade is exported.

MAJOR SESAME EXPORTERS
(in thousands of short tons of whole seed)
CY 2005

Country	Exports (000 tons)	Imports (000 tons)
India	220	5
Ethiopia	178	2
Sudan	146	0
China	57	214
Nigeria	50	0
Venezuela	35	0
Tanzania	34	0
Myanmar	34	0
Paraguay	32	0
Guatemala	31	16
Pakistan	27	0
Thailand	26	13
Bolivia	23	0

Source: UN / FAO

In 2005, there were 1,042 thousand short tons of whole sesame seed reported as imported. The major importers were

MAJOR SESAME IMPORTERS
(in thousands of short tons of whole seed)
CY 2005

Country	Import (000 tons)	Export (000 tons)
China	214	57
Japan	179
Turkey	95
Republic of Korea	58
United States of America	47
Saudi Arabia	33
Germany	28
Syrian Arab Republic	25
Mexico	25

WORLD TRADE

Graph of Sesame Imports (1,000 Short Tons)

As shown above, the world trade in sesame measured as imports continues to increase. In the last 15 years, the amount imported has increased by 88%.

The most significant country in world trade is now China because of its swing from a major exporter to the major importer as shown below.

CHINA SESAME TRADE
(in thousands of short tons of whole sesame)

Year	Exports	Imports	Net imports (Exports)
2000	113	41	(73)
2001	75	43	(32)
2002	108	45	(63)
2003	114	108	(7)
2004	46	153	107
2005	57	214	157

Source: UN / FAO

As the Chinese economy grows, incomes improve and the demand for sesame increases. This can be seen in imports, which have steadily increased to more than fourfold in six years. Despite the high variability in exports, the increased demand for sesame in China will cause its need to be a net importer to increase.

Implications

There is a large and growing market for "US grown sesame.” First, we can replace the 47,000 short tons of current US imports. Second, we can easily participate in supplying the growing quantities of seed that move in international trade. Hand harvesting traditional sesame varieties is not a popular occupation and small farmers continue to leave their farms and move to the city.

The mechanically harvested, non-dehiscent sesame varieties that we have in the United States will be needed to meet the increasing world demand for sesame.