Half way into season, the deficit in sowing of kharif crops is narrowing. According agriculture ministry data, 53.6 million hectare (MH) has been covered under the kharif crops by Friday, a decline of 4.2% on year. A week back the gap was 8.6%.
Because of ‘active’ monsoon rains over northwest, central and southern parts of the country in the last one week, deficiency in paddy transplanting has declined to 9.8% from 23.9% a week back. However, key paddy growing states – Jharkhand (-46%), Odisha (-28%), West Bengal (-13%), Bihar (-33%) and Telangana (-27%) are still reporting deficient rainfall.
Ministry officials that total area sown till now is around 49% of normal kharif sown area of 109 MH. “Gap in sowing activities is likely to be covered in the next two weeks as the monsoon would be active over central and eastern India in the next few days,” the official said.
The sowing of pulses – tur, urad and moong and oilseeds including groundnut and sunflower have declined by 16.15% and 10.37% respectively on year.
While sugarcane planting is up by 4.7%. on year, while area under coarse cereals such as maize, bajra and ragi was up 15.9%.
The sowing of cotton, a cash crop, is just 5% less than a year ago. Officials said that sowing of crops would continue till the end of next month. The harvesting season begins from October 1.
Meanwhile, according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the cumulative rainfall is 1% more than the benchmark – long period average on Friday.
IMD has predicted heavy rainfall over Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh over the next five days.
While stating that rainfall is likely to continue over Bihar, Sikkim, Assam and Meghalaya on Friday, the met department has predicted ‘increase in rainfall activity over east Madhya Pradesh, Vidarbha, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Konkan and Goa from July 17.
IMD on June 30 predicted ‘normal’ rainfall for the month of July, when around 40% of the monsoon precipitation typically occurs.
The monsoon, after a delayed onset over Kerala coast in four years, has been in the “active” mode since the last two weeks. It covered the entire country on July 2, six days ahead of the normal date.
Last month, the government had hiked the minimum support prices (MSP) of the key kharif crops for 2023-24 season (July-June) by 6-10.4%, the highest increase since 2018-19. The MSP for paddy, the key kharif crop, is fixed at Rs 2,183/quintal, up 7% on year.
India’s foodgrain production rose by 5% on year to a new record of 330.5 MT for the 2022-23 crop year, according to the agriculture ministry.