Poor rain in July and a not-so-impressive performance by the monsoon in August till now have started impacting cultivation of pulses, particularly arhar (pigeon peas).
Sowing is 930,000 hectares less than last year. The biggest drop has been in the area under arhar. As on August 5, the crop was sown on around 2.9 million ha, almost 15 per cent less from the same period last year.
The shortfall has raised doubts over the country's ability to match the record kharif pulses production in 2010-11, when output was 7.12 mt. Kharif sowing begins in June.
The jump propelled overall pulses’ output to a little over 18 mt, for the first time.
“Production of arhar has come under clouds this year because of poor initial rains in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra,” a senior government official said.
He said though there was scope for improvement, much would now depend on increasing per hectare yield, to compensate for the loss in acreage.
In Karnataka, acreage under arhar was around 30 per cent less till
Friday as compared to the same period last year, while in Maharashtra, it was around 16 per cent less as compared to the same period last year.
In Andhra Pradesh, the area under arhar was almost 46 per cent less this year as compared to the same period last year. In Karnataka, the government had targeted to increase the area under arhar by almost 40 per cent to 860,000 ha, while in Maharashtra government had targeted to raise it by 10 per cent to 1.2 million ha. Sowing of other pulses grown during the kharif season like urad and kulthi was more than last year, but their proportion is much less in the total production.
Among other kharif crops, sowing of all others, which included paddy, sugarcane, oilseeds and cotton, is more than last year. The area under coarse cereals continued to be down, by around 1.8 million ha as compared to the same period last year, with little chance of any recovery. “The area which was normally reserved for coarse cereals has been used for cotton and oilseeds, as poor early rains in western India stopped farmers from sowing these,” another official said.
There was some good news on the weather front, as the India Meteorological Department’s latest forecast said monsoon activity might strengthen across the country from August 13. However, experts believed this would be too late, the sowing of most kharif crops would get over by the end of August.
In July, rainfall was 86 per cent of the Long Period Average (LPA), around seven per cent less than IMD’s initial forecast. Total rainfall in August-September is expected to be below normal, at 90 per cent of LPA. LPA is the average rainfall in the last 50 years, estimated to be 89 centimetres.
