India’s monsoon will advance to the main cotton and sugar cane growing regions in the next two to three days, the weather bureau said, boosting prospects of a rebound in winter-harvested crops.
Rain is expected across Karnataka and Goa in south India and parts of Maharashtra—a top producer of sugar cane and cotton—as the effects of tropical cyclone Phet wanes, said Medha Kole, director at the India Meteorological Department (IMD). There was rainfall across more areas of coastal Karnataka, including Karwar on Monday, she said.
India’s 235 million farmers rely on the timing of the June-to-September monsoon rains to decide which crops to grow. Normal rains may lift farm output and cool food price gains after the weakest monsoon since 1972 last year cut rice and cane output.
“The rain will be beneficial for sugar cane—which is in a vegetative stage—and sowing of cotton and soybean,” Krishna Reddy, an analyst at Way2Wealth Commodities said.
“The cotton area should increase substantially as a revival in demand for textiles has boosted prices.”
Monsoon rains are critical to the South-Asian nation after a drought last year damaged crops and pushed up sugar prices in New York to near a three-decade high in February. The nation may halt sugar imports as output may jump as much as 30 per cent to 24 million tonnes in the year beginning Oct. 1, Vivek Saraogi, managing director at Balrampur Chini Mills, had said last month.
Cyclone weakens
Cyclone Phet, which lashed the coast of Oman last week, has weakened and may cause widespread rainfall in parts of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh in the next 24 hours, Kole said on Monday. Gujarat and Rajasthan are among the nation’s main cotton producers.
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“Prices of agricultural commodities will stay depressed in India until something goes wrong with the progress of monsoon,” Reddy said.
Sugar prices in India, the world’s biggest consumer, fell to their lowest in more than eight months on Monday, on speculation that rising domestic production may ease a shortage. Immediate delivery prices at Vashi in Mumbai, the country’s largest wholesale market for the commodity, dropped 0.2 per cent to Rs 2,679.15 per 100 Kg on Monday. That’s the lowest price since Aug. 6. Soybean futures for July delivery on the National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange in Mumbai fell as much as 1.3 per cent to Rs 1,914.50 per 100 kilograms on Monday, the lowest since Jan. 1, 2009.
The monsoon this year may be 98 per cent of the 50-year average, the IMD had said on April 23.
The bureau, which failed to predict last year’s drought, considers rainfall to be normal if it is between 96 per cent and 104 per cent of the long-range average.