The Ministry of Agriculture’s data on Friday showed that area under the paddy cultivation is down by 5.62 per cent at 383.99 lakh hectare in the ongoing kharif season so far due to poor rains in some States. Paddy was sown in 406.89 lakh hectares in the year-ago period.
Paddy is the main kharif crop and its sowing begins with the onset of the southwest monsoon from June and harvesting from October onwards. There was a huge lag in paddy sowing in the states of Jharkhand (9.80 lakh ha), Madhya Pradesh (6.32 lakh ha), West Bengal (4.45 lakh ha), Chhattisgarh (3.91 lakh ha), Uttar Pradesh (2.61 lakh ha), and Bihar (2.18 lakh ha) so far this kharif season.
The lag in paddy sowing was not significant in states of Odisha (0.84 lakh ha), Andhra Pradesh (0.31 lakh ha), Assam (0.29 lakh ha), Meghalaya (0.21 lakh ha), Punjab (0.12 lakh ha), Jammu and Kashmir (0.05 lakh ha), Mizoram (0.03 lakh ha), Sikkim (0.02 lakh ha) and Tripura (0.01 lakh ha).
The government has set a marginally higher target of 51.8 million tonne (mt) of kharif rice procurement for 2022-23 season (October-September) by the Food Corporation of India (FCI) and state government agencies against the actual procurement in previous year despite the possibility of drop in output because of lower paddy sowing.
The Centre was able to procure far less winter-sown wheat this year than it had hoped to, as farmers preferred to sell to private traders than to the government because rates had jumped above federally-determined floor prices on the back of a smaller crop.
Besides paddy, there was marginal decline in coverage of pulses with 129.55 lakh hectare covered so far this kharif season against 135.46 lakh hectare in the year-ago period. Tur/arhar area was down marginally at 44.86 lakh ha as against 47.56 lakh ha, while that of urad acreage was lagging slightly at 36.62 lakh ha as against 38.18 lakh ha in the comparable period.
Oilseeds coverage too was lagging behind as the area coverage was down marginally at 188.51 lakh ha till September 2 of this kharif season as against 189.66 lakh ha in the year-ago period.
However in case of coarse-cum-nutri cereals, the sowing was slightly up at 178.96 lakh ha as against 171.62 lakh ha in the said period.
Among cash crops, cotton acreage remained up at 125.69 lakh ha, and sugarcane area was slightly higher at 55.65 lakh ha from over the year-ago period. Jute/mesta area remained flat at 6.95 lakh ha so far in the ongoing kharif season, the data showed.
According to the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), the country has received 6 per cent higher southwest monsoon rains during June-August period. However east and north eastern parts of the country have reported a 19 percent deficient rainfall in the same period.