American Sesame Growers Association

 

99% of world production is manual as in this photo from India.

World Sesame Situation

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., 2005 data becomes available in Jan 2006. Trade figures, meaning imports and exports, lag almost a full year, i.e., 2005 data will not be available until Dec 2006 or even perhaps 2007. FAO figures are only as good as the data provided by each country and some countries will change their numbers. Data available as of Apr 2006 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.

REGIONAL SESAME PRODUCTION, TRADE, AND CONSUMPTION
(in thousands of short tons of whole seed)
Production CY 2005 - Trade CY 2004

Area	Area Harvested (000 acres)	Production (tons)	Imports (tons)	Exports (tons)	Net Imports (Exports)	Consumption
Asia	11,070	2,547	6901	342	348	2,895
Africa	6,921	953	60	422	(362)	591
South America	345	79	4	54	(49)	30
Central America	329	81	32	37	(5)	76
North America	0	0	54	3	51	51
Europe	1	2	146	25	121	123
Oceania	0	0	8	0	8	8
World	18,666	3,662	996	884	112	3,774

Consumption = Production + Net Trade
Source: UN / FAO

From this summary we can see that:

• Asia produces 70% of the world's supply of seed and Africa 26% for a total of 96%.
  
• Very significantly, 27% 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 38% of its production.
  
• While Asia exports 13% of its crop, it imports twice as much as it exports.
  
• Europe is a major importer.

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 sixteen countries who are the major producers in the world, as shown in the next table, six are in Asia, eight in Africa and two are in Latin America. Together they account for 87% of the production.

In 2005, there were 18.7 million acres harvested, producing 3.7 million short tons of whole sesame seed for an average yield of 392 lbs/acre. There is a high correlation between yield and the amount of moisture. 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)
CY2005

Country	Area Harvested (000 acres)	Production
China	1,633	800
India	4,571	750
Myanmar	3,385	606
Sudan	4,201	331
Uganda	521	121
Nigeria	408	83
Pakistan	334	75
Ethiopia	230	72
Bangladesh	198	55
Central African Republic	104	47
Thailand	158	46
Tanzania, United Rep of	259	45
Egypt	74	41
Guatemala	138	39
Chad	235	39
Paraguay	168	37

World sesame trade

In 2004, there were 884 thousand short tons of whole sesame seed reported as exported. The major exporters were:

MAJOR SESAME EXPORTERS
(in thousands of short tons of whole seed)
CY 2004

Country	Exports (tons)	Imports (tons)
Sudan	209	0
India	173	2
Ethiopia	84	0
Myanmar	46	0
China	46	153
Nigeria	44	0
Tanzania	28	0
Thailand	25	13
Paraguay	25	0

Source: UN / FAO

• Either India or the Sudan could be the leader in exports in any given year depending on the amount of rain in each country.
  
• 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.
  
• Parts of China do the exporting while other parts do the major importing. Oil grade sesame is imported while food grade is exported.

  In 2004, there were 995 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 2004
  

  Country	Import (tons)	Export (tons)
  Japan	171	0
  China	153	46
  Republic of Korea	88	0
  Turkey	87	4
  United States of America	47	3
  Syrian Arab Republic	46	0
  Israel	36	0
  Egypt	35	4
  Mexico	28	12
  Netherlands	27	16
  Germany	27	2
  Greece	26	2
  Lebanon	24	0

  
  

  As shown by the following figure, the world trade in sesame measured as imports continues to increase. In the last 15 years the amount imported has increased by 79%

WORLD TRADE
(shown as imports in thousands of short tons of whole sesame)

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

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

Year	Exports	Imports	Net imports (Exports)
1999	107	37	(69)
2000	113	41	(73)
2001	75	43	(32)
2002	108	45	(63)
2003	114	108	(7)
2004	46	153	107

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.