The Agriculture Ministry is in tizzy as the sowing of rice — the primary kharif crop — has been hit with monsoon rains playing truant with many eastern States and Uttar Pradesh. It’s not just the sowing of rice area that has fallen but plantings of arhar, urad, bajra, ragi, maize, groundnut, sunflower sesamum, castor, jute and cotton have been lower this year.
As per latest data of the Agriculture Ministry, sowing for all kharif crops stands at 738 lakh hectares, which is nearly 7 per cent lower than the 798 lakh hectares covered in the same week last year.
There is a drop of 60 lakh hectatre in the area sown with rice, pulses, coarse cereals and oil seeds. Of the 14 notified kharif crops for which MSPs are fixed, farmers have reduced plantings in as many as 11. Normally, kharif crops are sown on about 106 million hectares of land in a year. Nearly 50 per cent of India’s cultivable farm-area is depend cultivable farm-area is dependent on the monsoon making it lifeline of the country’s rural and agriculture economy.
The Ministry’s data showed that the acreage under rice cultivation is nearly 28 lakh hectares — about 12 per cent lower than the year-ago period. Rice cultivation was nearly 50 per cent lower than the normal for the week in Bihar and Jharkhand; the shortfall for West Bengal was 40 per cent and for Uttar Pradesh, 20 per cent. Almost 93 per cent of the acreage was in Bihar, Odisha and eastern Uttar Pradesh.
In all the three States, the southwest monsoon till July 27 was more than 35 per cent below than normal. Among States that have reported better rice acreage are Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The decline in planting of rice is attributed to insufficient and delayed monsoon rainfall in some parts of the country.
Planting of pulses improved substantially over the previous week, but acreage was lower than the year-ago period. The cultivation of urad, whose acreage at 27.45 lakh hectare is nearly 17 per cent less than last year’s fugures, seems to be an area of concern. The acreage under moong and arhar nearly matches last year’s numbers, and is better than what is normal for the year.
Oilseed acreage was down 1.15 per cent mainly due to a drop in groundnut and sunflower area in Gujarat, due to delayed. Cotton sowing, at 102.5 lakh hectare, is close to what is normal for the week, while that of coarse cereals falls behind by 8 per cent.
According to Met Department latest data, over dozen of States and UTs are facing rain deficient during the southwest monsoon season, known for planting kharif crops this year.
According to the Government data, in 2017, nearly 40 lakh hectares of agricultural land was impacted because of water woes, resulting in a drop in the area under cultivation for crops such as rice, pulses and oilseeds. In Andhra Pradesh, Rabi acreage has shrunk by 7 lakh hectares in 2017 and 2.5 lakh hectares of Kharif acreage remained uncultivated in the State, mainly due to water woes. In Kerala, the area under paddy cultivation decreased from 1.9 lakh hectares in 2015-16 to 1.7 lakh hectares in 2016-17.
The Agriculture Ministry has set a target to increase foodgrain production by over 6 million tonnes to record 283.7 million tonnes in 2018-19 crop year on hopes of weather office forecast of normal monsoon.
The foodgrain output in the 2017-18 crop year (July-June) is estimated at an all-time high 277.49 million tones. Rice production target has been fixed at 113 million tonnes in 2018-19 from estimated 111.01 million tonnes output in the current crop year.