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Agriculture Ministry says rains improve crops status

Widespread rains in August have lessened the effects of an earlier drought on India's winter rice and oilseeds crops and helped prepare the ground for summer crops, the Agriculture Ministry said on Friday.

The rains had brought enough moisture for the next summer crop which is sown in November and harvested in March, a ministry statement quoted Agriculture Minister Ajit Singh as saying at a meeting on drought.

He said there would be still be a shortfall in winter crop output caused by scanty rains in July, but the rains since then would help the summer crop and that total grains output for the whole year would not be greatly affected.

"The recent rains would help the summer crop and the overall production of foodgrains might not be affected to a large extent," the minister was quoted as saying.

Singh said July had turned out to be the relatively driest month for a century and had resulted in losses to the farmers.

Analysts said the moisture in the soil after the rains will help planting of summer crops, mainly wheat in northern and central India.

The June-September southwest monsoon rains hit the southern Kerala coast on schedule in June but their progress was erratic with most parts of the country remaining dry in July.

Singh said that in view of the comfortable foreign exchange and foodgrains position, the consumer would not suffer but farmers would be hit by lower incomes.

The cumulative rainfall so far during the monsoon season has been 19 per cent less than the long period average.

RICE CROP

The ministry statement said that rice has been planted over 27.9 million hectares compared with 34.3 million hectares in the corresponding period last year. The normal area under winter rice is around 40.6 million hectares.

Traders say India's winter rice crop would be 10 to 15 per cent lower than last winter's output of about 80 million tonnes.

The statement said sowing of winter groundnut has been completed except in southern Tamil Nadu state.

It said area coverage under groundnut was about five million hectares compared with 5.4 million hectares in the previous year, mainly due to lower area under the crop in Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

"The oilseed crops, particularly groundnut is reported to be under acute moisture stress in parts of Andhra Pradesh, where germination of late sown crop is affected," the statement said.

The ministry said soybean sowing was almost complete with the area coverage about 5.6 million hectares, about 600,000 hectares lower than last year, due to deficient rains in July.

Traders say the soybean crop could be nearer to the previous year's level of 5.2 million tonnes because of better yields in Madhya Pradesh, the country's soybean bowl.

But they say lack of rains in July will hit the overall winter oilseeds output which could be around 10.5 million to 11 million tonnes compared with last year's 12.3 million.

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