Farmers uncertain of future as rains end

MONSOON WATCH

The withdrawal of the south-west monsoon from north-western India has left the country's agriculture in a state of uncertainty.

Though the sowing of most commercial crops, barring sugarcane, has been good, the area under foodgrain, including pulses, has dropped significantly.

The yield prospects of standing crops, too, are uncertain due to the erratic distribution of rainfall over time and space. The silver-lining is that the extent of area experiencing inconsistent rain has not been as large as in the recent drought year of 2002, when the rainfall distribution pattern was more or less similar.

The latest data available with the India Meteorological Department (IMD) indicates that 13 of the total 36 meteorological sub-divisions have received deficient rainfall this season.

These comprise as many as 227, or 44 per cent, of the total 524 districts and include about 15, or 3 per cent, with merely scanty rainfall (over 60 per cent deficiency).

The worst-affected areas include Punjab, west Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, west Rajasthan and Vidharba, where rainfall deficiency exceeds 35 per cent. The other meteorological sub-divisions falling in the deficient rainfall category are Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, east Uttar Pradesh, east Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, coastal Karnataka, Kerala and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. All these areas have recorded rainfall deficiency of over 20 per cent.

The actual rainfall in the country as a whole till September 22 was 749.8 mm, about 12 per cent below the normal 854.5 mm.

However, the main problem, from the agricultural view-point, lies in the distribution of rainfall. After the copious pre-monsoon showers, the advent of the monsoon was delayed till virtually the end of July in large parts of the country.

After three-four weeks of widespread rainfall, monsoon activity was subdued in September in many areas, notably the whole of north-west and part of central and peninsular India.

As a result, crop sowing was interrupted in the main planting season of July in the rain-starved tracts. Though it picked up in August, the belated seeded crops faced moisture stress again in September, jeopardising output prospects.

Information available with the agriculture ministry till September 22 indicated that the sowing of paddy was lagging behind last year's by some 2.4 million hectares and that of coarse cereals by as much as 3.3 million hectares.

Pulses acreage shrank by 1.77 million hectares. Together, these three main crop groups that constitute the country's main foodgrain basket, had an acreage shortfall of nearly 7.4 million hectares.

Though paddy planting may pick up in the next few weeks as sowing operations are still continuing in southern states, the area under other kharif food crops is unlikely to change much now.

However, the position of commercial crops is much better thanks to the expansion in area under oilseeds and cotton. While the acreage under kharif oilseeds is reckoned to have expanded by nearly 2 million hectares, that under cotton has gone up by over 8,40,000 hectares.

Much of the increase in the oilseeds area is accounted for soyabean (+1 million hectares) and groundnut (0.32 million hectares).

An equally important commercial crop, sugarcane, has done poorly. Its acreage has shrunk substantially in Maharashtra (down 50 per cent), Tamil Nadu and Punjab. However, there are chances of some recovery in Maharashtra in the forthcoming 'suru' cane crop.

This year's monsoon has completely belied the IMD's prediction that rainfall would be 100 per cent normal and evenly distributed.