With just a couple of days left for the sowing season to end, the area under kharif crops is a shade above last year’s levels. So far, 105.3 million hectares (MH) have been covered, which is close to 97% of the normal sown area, recording a marginal increase of 0.34% on year.
“Overall, sowing area in this kharif season is expected to marginally surpass last year’s level,” an agriculture ministry official told FE.
However, after a surplus July, the below normal rainfall in August so far may impact the yield of crops, including paddy, pulses and oilseeds, officials cautioned. The yield will be crucial to curb the spike in food prices.
Paddy transplanting is largely complete and, is at present, up 4.4% year-on-year (y-o-y). So far, rice has been transplanted on 38.4 MH or about 96% of the normal sown area. Sowing will be completed in a few days as it has been delayed in eastern regions because of late arrival of monsoon rains. The harvesting of crops will commence from October 1.
Anticipating a drop in production and higher cereal inflation, the Centre banned exports of white rice last month.
Experts said kharif paddy, which accounts for 80% of the country’s rice production, could get affected because of floods in parts of Punjab and delay in sowing.
The sowing of pulses – tur, urad and moong – is lagging 8.3% on year so far, while the area under oilseeds, including groundnut, soybean and sunflower is marginally lower on year. Sugarcane planting has risen 0.8% on year and the area under coarse cereals such as maize, bajra and ragi is up 1.1%.
Cotton sowing is marginally below last year’s level, while area under sugarcane is marginally up by on year.
In June, the government had hiked the minimum support prices (MSP) of key kharif crops for 2023-24 season (July-June) by 6-10.4%, the highest increase since 2018-19. The MSP for paddy has been fixed at `2,183/quintal, up 7% on year.
Meanwhile, according to India Meteorological Department (IMD), overall monsoon rains have been at “below normal” level, falling short of the benchmark – long period average (LPA) – by 7% till Friday. The met department has said 61% of the 717 districts in the country have so far received normal or excess rainfall. The remaining 283 districts have received deficient and scanty rainfall.
In the southern peninsula and east and north-east region, rainfall is still 18% and 16% below the LPA respectively.
The water levels in 146 key reservoirs have dropped 21% below the last year’s level and 6% below the average of last 10 year because of sharp fall in water level in southern regions. The agriculture ministry will be releasing first advance estimate of foodgrain production for 2023-24 crop year (July-June) next month. India’s foodgrain production rose 5% y-o-y to a new record of 330.5 million tonne for the 2022-23 crop year, according to the agriculture ministry.