The India Meteorological Department (IMD) can claim credit for its correct long range forecast of the Southwest monsoon in 2008, having earlier projected 99% and 100% of the long period average (LPA) in April and June respectively as against the 98% of the LPA rainfall actually received. Unfortunately, its forecast acumen was of not much practical use to either to policy makers or to farmers at large. The reason for this was that the official monsoon projections for the month of July, which account for close to three-fourth of the area sown in the kharif season, went wide off the mark. While the IMD forecast rainfall to be 98% of the LPA in July, the actual rainfall was only 83% of the LPA, causing an unexpectedly sharp fall in sown area, with both the farmers and the central and state governments being caught entirely unaware of the erratic trend. The inaccuracy of the official forecasts was not just restricted to the distribution of rainfall across the monsoon period but also to the geographical spread. While the IMD projections for South, Central and Northeast India held firm, those for Northwest India went wide off the mark with the region receiving an excess of rainfall which was 108% of the LPA as against the 96% forecasted.
Numbers from the agriculture ministry show that the enthusiastic early expansion in the planting of kharif crops, buoyed by good rains in June, was soon derailed with the farmers holding back sowing operations till the monsoon rebounded in early August. The expansion of sowing operations, which had shot up by an additional 2.6 million hectares by early July, as compared to the corresponding period of the previous year, was derailed and the total area sown under kharif crops fell by 4.8 million hectares by the end of the July. Rice was the only major crop that managed to evade the impact of the erratic march of the monsoon in July primarily because of the continued good rainfall in the rice growing areas of Bihar, Chattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh that pushed up the total sown area under rice by 2.4 million hectares by the end of July. It was pulses that bore the brunt of the erratic trend in the monsoon, with planted area dipping sharply by 2 million hectares, most of it in the states of Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.
Though the pick up of the Southwest monsoon in August and September has helped offset some of the fall in sown area in July, the total gross cropped areas by the second half of September was still 2.9 million hectares or 2.8% short of the normal cropped area. Though area under rice and oilseeds remains higher by 1.2 million hectares and 0.4 million hectares respectively, that under coarse pulses and coarse grains has dipped by 2 million hectares and 1.4 million hectares. Similarly area under both sugarcane and coarse cereals has also reduced by around a million hectares each.
This shortfall in cropped area in the current khariff season, when global agriculture supplies and prices continue to be under pressure, was not something which was entirely unavoidable and it would be unfair to blame the truant monsoons alone for the set back in kharif production. A more accurate prediction of the distribution of the monsoon, especially during the peak-sowing season, would have helped the state and central governments to warn farmers and take corrective steps to help them to switch to short term varieties of specific crops or even switch crops to help expand overall output.
This once again brings us back to the question why the IMD should continue to remain the monopoly supplier of monsoon and other weather forecasts. Institutional changes that would help provide easier access of the weather data to both government and private agencies, and bring in competition, will help improve accuracy of the forecasts and open up new vistas to both governments and farmers to respond to fluctuating monsoons and ensure greater stability in agriculture production. It is high time that the government initiated measures in this direction.
p.raghavan@expressindia.com
