Poor monsoon rains have not hit cane cultivation as much as feared in India's biggest sugar producing state, Maharashtra, while the soybean crop has survived relatively unharmed there, trade and industry officials said on Wednesday.
The June to September monsoon rains have been 19 percent below average so far in the season, raising concerns about output of summer-sown crops such as cane and soybean.
Although lower cane cultivation would drag down sugar output in Maharashtra, India would still have surplus sugar, said Abinash Verma, director general of the Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA), a producers' body.
Scanty rains would cut Maharashtra's sugar output by 1.4 million tonnes in the next season beginning in October from 9.0 million in the previous year, he said. Last month, estimates had put output at around 7.3 million tonnes.
But India's overall production would be 25 million tonnes, 3 million tonnes more than local consumption.
India, the world's biggest sugar producer behind Brazil, is exporting the sweetener in 2011/12 for the second year in a row.
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SOYBEANS UNHARMED
The June to September monsoon was delayed in soybean areas of Maharashtra, initially causing concern, but rains picked up in the past few weeks, making trade and industry officials confident about this year's output.
Soybean output in Maharashtra could be the same as last year's, said Rajesh Agrawal, an official of the Soybean Processors' Association of India.
The state contributes about a third of the country's total soybean output of around 11.5 million tonnes.
Output of soybean, the main summer oilseed, is important for India, the world's biggest vegetable oil importer.
"There is a fear that kharif (summer season) has been badly affected . . .," Prithviraj Chavan, chief minister of the state, told a news conference.
Some believe poor rains may impact winter crops as well.
"If rains do not improve in coming days then the underground water level will go down and winter sowing could also get affected," said Anil Somani, a farmer from Akola district in Maharashtra, who is planning to sow chickpeas or chana and wheat in his field in the winter season.
Farmers in India, the world's second-biggest rice and wheat grower, plant summer-sown crops in the rainy months of June and July, with harvests from October. Winter-planted crops are sown in October and September. Farmers begin harvesting the winter crops from March.
Summer-sown crops are dominated by rice at 70 percent of the total, and make up about half of India's total crop output.
India, facing its second drought in just four years, on Tuesday took steps to cut irrigation costs and increase fodder supplies for livestock farmers but held off from imposing any curb on exports of agricultural products or a ban of futures trading in them.