Deficit rainfall, reduced sowing: Estimates overstate food grain produce?

Possible because of the way the estimate is calculated

Food grain production is expected to touch a record 141.6 million tonnes in 2018-19 (kharif season) according to the 1st advance estimates of crop production, up from 140.7 million tonnes last year. 

This is despite the fact that rainfall from June to September has been around 10 per cent lower than normal and sowing has declined by nearly 4 per cent compared to last year. 

Why is this so? Have the 1st advance estimates overestimated food grain production this time around? Will actual output end up being lower than what has been estimated? 

It is difficult to say for sure. Part of the explanation rests on the way the 1st advance estimates have been arrived at. 

For one, the 1st advance estimates do not take into account the yield (production per unit area sown) of the current year; rather, they are based on previous years’ average yields. So, if yields this year end up being lower than last year, which looks most likely, then actual food grain production will not be able to match the 1st advance estimate.  

For another, the initial estimates of sowing taken into account in the 1st advance estimates are actually ‘eye estimates’ and not firm estimates. They also don’t take into account the full seasons’ data.

Finally, with wholesale prices for crops such as pulses being depressed for two consecutive marketing seasons, it may have nudged farmers to reduce their input costs, resulting in lower fertiliser usage. This is likely to exert a downward pressure on yields, and consequently production. 

The flip side, though, is that water stored in dams was 5 per cent more than the 10-year average at the end of September, which could render the impact of deficient rainfall on paddy negligible.

The kharif cropping season typically starts in the western parts of the country at the beginning of June and continues till as late as September. But most of the sowing is concentrated in July and August.

At the all India level, sowing in June was estimated at 6.2 million hectares (mha)—the lowest in the last six years—barring 2014, a drought year, when it was 4.2 mha. While sowing picked up in the subsequent months, especially in August, it remained well below the levels observed in the previous two years. 

Now, apart from the fact that the 1st advance estimates take into account sowing data only till the middle of August, the data on the area sown are not accurate, to say the least. Rather, they are ‘eye estimates’ sent by village patwaris (revenue officers), which are then extrapolated to arrive at an assessment of the area sown.

But a more important issue is that of the yield. The 1st advance estimates are based on the average yields of the last three years. 

“The average crop yield of the last three years is taken as a proxy for the current season’s crop yield. As crop yields surged in the last two years, this could have created an upward bias in this year’s estimate,” said a senior official in the Ministry of Agriculture.

“The actual yield this year would be below normal, since many major agro-climatic zones saw rain deficit towards the end of the season,” he added.

But as sowing improved, the rainfall deficit climbed up from 5 per cent at the end of June to 9.4 per cent by the end of the season (June to September). This is likely to have affected the yields adversely, say observers from various states. 

Take the example of Marathwada region in Maharashtra. Rainfall was scant in many districts in the region in September, affecting the crop, said a senior professor in the agriculture university of Parbhani district. 

“In the case of tur (arhar) in the region, the crop has not received rains after its flowering stage. The height of the crop is less than normal, and the yield looks worrisome,” he noted.  

Weekly rainfall data from the Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre attests to this. In the second half of the cropping season in Parbhani district in the region, rainfall was deficient in nine out of ten weeks. The situation is not very different in the adjacent districts. 

On the other hand, in Madhya Pradesh, the crop situation has worsened due to excessive rains. “Owing to heavy rains in July, the quality of the urad crop observed in the recently concluded crop cutting experiments is far below the average,” said a senior official in the state’s department of agriculture. 

Apart from food grains, oilseeds such as groundnut have been affected, reports suggest. Another factor is prices, which tend to have a bearing on both sowing and yields. “If prices are depressed in wholesale markets, farmers do not expect remunerative prices for their produce. They then reduce their input costs to keep their margin,” said Ashok Gulati, Professor at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations. 

The first casualty of cost cutting tends to be the use of fertiliser. Reduced fertiliser use leads to lower yields, pulling down output. This would suggest that yields, this year, are likely to be lower than the assumption made in the 1st advance estimates.

On the other hand, paddy production has benefited from higher reservoir levels. The water-guzzling paddy forms more than 70 per cent of kharif food grain production and needs robust irrigation. 

Although reservoir levels have have fallen back to normal from the surplus in September, they have helped the standing paddy crop along the season, experts said.