Groundnut sowing areas remain stressed, shows CRISIL's DRIP index

The south-west monsoon continues to progress decently, barring some areas of stress. Thecumulative all-India rainfall was just 1% below normal as on August 2, 2021, same as a week back.
 
Region-wise, there has been improvement in the north-west, where rainfall was 1% above normalcompared with 7% below normal as on July 24. This is salutary because the region accounts for 43.7% of India’s foodgrains production.
 
Likewise, the southern peninsula received 13% above-normal rains. Central India was normal, with no deviation from its long-term trend. However, in the east and north-east (together considered a meteorological subdivision) rainfall was 13% below normal. Put another way, as on August 02, only one of the four meteorological subdivisions of India had below-normal rainfall.
 
Now to the specific pain points: In central India, major kharif producers Gujarat and Odisha continue to see substantially inadequate rainfall – 36% and 21% below normal, respectively.
 
Overall kharif sowing is 41.9% lower on-year for the week ended July 30 because of the high base of last season – when a bounteous monsoon had triggered large-scale sowing. However, compared with the average of the past five seasons, sowing is 7.6% higher.
 
But state-level rainfall data alone does not tell the complete story, because there are vulnerabilities that arise from inadequate irrigation that also need to be considered.
 
CRISIL’s Deficient Rainfall Impact Parameter (DRIP) does just that. It provides a holistic impact assessment of deficiency by factoring in the irrigation buffer available across states and crops.
 
Typically, higher the DRIP score, more adverse the impact of deficient rains.

The latest DRIP scores – as on July 28 – remained high for Gujarat and Odisha, both on-year and the past five-year average. Rajasthan’s score was higher than the five-year average, but lower on-year. The persistently poor rainfall in Gujarat, which accounts for a fifth of oilseeds production in the country, does not augur well.
 
Among crops, groundnut (Gujarat, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu) has a DRIP score higher than both, the last season and the five-year average. This reflects low irrigation buffer, especially in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, with irrigated crop area for groundnut at just 12.4% and 33.3%, respectively.
 
At an all-India level, only 27.5% of the groundnut crop area is under irrigation, according to government data. Gujarat accounted for 46% of India’s groundnut production in 2019-20, the latest year for which state- and crop-wise data is available.
 
That means, despite the improvement in rainfall, a few major states and an important oilseed crop remain stressed.
 
Better spatial distribution of rains is crucial in the days ahead.