Agriculture ministry projects higher kharif production of rice, pulses; cotton output seen to dip – Economy News

With surplus rainfall so far in this monsoon season and kharif crops reporting higher than last year, the output of rice, maize and pulses are expected to rise compared to previous year while cotton output is set to fall because of lower sown area, according to preliminary assessment by the agriculture ministry.

“According to initial ground-level reports presented by the stakeholders, the rice and maize production is expected to be promising for the upcoming season. However, acreage of cotton is expected to be lesser in this season due to crop diversification,” according to an official note.

At 41 million hectare (MH), paddy sowing has been up more than 4% on year. Cotton sowing had declined by 9% to 11.24 MH as compared with 12.36 MH during the same period last year, according to agriculture ministry data till last week.

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Kharif area up 2% on year, paddy rises 4.3%

The agriculture ministry is currently conducting a series of meetings with stakeholders for formulating the first advance estimates of agricultural crops for the 2024-25 crop year (July-June).

“Our overall rice production will be more than last year despite flooding because rice planting is higher this year,” Shivraj Singh Chouhan, agriculture has said on the impact of recent rains and flooding over several parts of the country.

Recently the agriculture ministry has stated that the outlook for tur and moong production is robust. At 12.8 MH, pulses – tur, urad and moong sown area is up 7.8% on year. However traders say that while tur output is likely to be higher than last year, urad output may get impacted because of surplus rains across key growing areas.

The overall rainfall this season since June 1 till Friday has been 6.4% above the benchmark long period average or ‘above normal’ range. India Meteorological Department has stated that 77% of the 729 odd districts in the country have received rainfall in the range of surplus to normal range.

Till a week ago, at 109.66 MH, sowing of paddy, pulses, oilseeds, coarse cereals, cotton and sugarcane was up 2.2% on year.

With the exception of cotton, sowing of paddy, oilseeds, coarse cereals and sugarcane sowing this season has been higher than normal sown area.

Officials said the sowing, especially pulses and paddy, would continue till the end of the month. Agriculture minister Chouhan had earlier stated overall the impact of rains has been around 1 – 2% of total sown crops in the country while rains in the next couple of weeks would be critical to crop health.

The agriculture ministry has set a target of record food grains production of 340 million tonne (MT) during the 2024-25, 3.4% higher than 328.8 MT estimated during the previous crop year. This includes 159.97 MT from the kharif season, 164 MT from the rabi season and 16.43 MT from the summer season.

According to the latest Central Water Commission (CWC)’s weekly bulletin, the 155 key reservoir capacities are filled up to 87% of their capacities.

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