Monsoon took a long break in July in the interior peninsula, Maharashtra and parts of Gujarat and Rajasthan, Yet, the overall distribution of rains till mid-August has been the best in the past five years.
As a result, worries about crop output in the current kharif season have lessened, except for pulses whose sowing has suffered a major setback due to paucity of moisture at the peak sowing period. Though the planting of coarse cereals has been relatively poor too, the shortfall in their production is likely to be offset, to a considerable extent, by the anticipated higher output of rice.
Cotton, which has also been sown on a relatively smaller area, may not suffer much because of the higher coverage under high-yielding, pest-protected transgenic Bt-cotton hybrids. Besides, some re-sowing has also been reported, especially in Gujarat, in areas where the timely planted crops had withered during the dry spell in July.
Oilseeds output may be more or less satisfactory as the anticipated loss in groundnut output is likely to be compensated by a larger soyabean harvest. Sugarcane crop, too, has lost some area but that is part of the cyclic trend in sugar and cane output.
The water stock in the major reservoirs, which was a concern till the beginning of August due to the precariously low level, has improved considerably, thanks to copious rainfall in the last three weeks. The total water in the 81 reservoirs, which was about 8 per cent below normal (last 10 year’s average) till August 8, had turned 5 per cent above normal by August 14.
However, the total water stock in these dams, estimated by the Central Water Commission at 74.3 billion cubic metres (BCM) as on August 14, was still 22 per cent below the last year’s corresponding level of 94.96 BCM. But, with plenty of rainfall still in store till the monsoon begins withdrawing in the first week of September, the water situation is likely to improve further.
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According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), a cyclonic circulation over Orissa and the neighbouring areas is likely to cause widespread rainfall in the region in the next couple of days. Fairly widespread rainfall is also predicted for the entire intensive agricultural belt in the north-west, east Rajasthan and north Madhya Pradesh in the next two days.
The IMD’s medium range forecast till August 26 indicates an increase in rainfall in the north-eastern and sub-Himalayan West Bengal and Sikkim, and subdued rainfall over the rest of the country.
The total rainfall between June 1 and August 13 was estimated at 588.1 mm, about 2 per cent more than the normal 575 mm for this period. Significantly, 77 per cent of the country’s total 533 districts had received normal or above rainfall cumulative rainfall till mid-August this year.
The sowing reports received from the states by the agriculture ministry till August 13 indicate that paddy has been planted on about 2.5 million hectares larger area this year. But, the area under coarse cereals is reckoned to have shrunk by almost a similar margin.
Notably, the increase in rice acreage is due largely to more than 40 per cent higher sowing in Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. A marginal increase in area has been reported in Punjab and Haryana, where superior scented variety Pusa-1121 has been planted on larger acreage. The partial lifting of the ban on non-basmati rice exports is likely to vindicate the farmers’ optimism on this count.
In coarse cereals, the 12 per cent shortfall in planted acreage is due largely to over 30 per cent drop in area in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.
The loss in cotton acreage is confined largely to Rajasthan (minus 40 per cent) and its adjoining areas in Haryana (minus 15 per cent) though some area shortfall is reported also from Punjab and Gujarat.
In oilseeds, the total area sown is almost the same as last year, though there are some marginal shortfalls in crops such as groundnut, sunflower and castor, besides others. But soyabean has been sown on 8 per cent more area and the crop condition is also said to be good, indicating likelihood of higher total production. Interestingly, some of the traditionally coarse cereals producing areas in Rajasthan are reported to have been diverted to oilseeds this year.
The situation on pulses is, however, still worrying with a nearly 16 per cent drop in area. What is worse, the area shortfall is unlikely to be made up to any appreciable extent as the sowing time for most pulses is over. Karnataka and Bihar have reported nearly 40 per cent drop in pulses acreage. So, the prices of pulses are unlikely to soften.