Monsoon still deficient but crops getting good rainfall (21-Jul-2010)
India’s southwest monsoon remains deficient to the tune of 14-15% by last week, but a revival in the current week is resulting in good rainfall in most of the key Kharif crop areas. According to the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), despite rains being lower than average, the distribution of rainfall was supporting crop outlook.
There has been sharp increase in monsoon activity in last couple of days that has also brought the cumulative shortfall down by couple of percentage points. Rains in the Uttar Pradesh, biggest producer of sugarcane in the country, were three times compared with long period average (LPA) in last two days while that in Punjab and Haryana, major producers of rice and cotton (Kharif season), were also double the normal amount. Rainfall in central India’s soybean farms has also picked up.
Overall, sowing activity in most of the key crop areas has shown significant increase in recent days and the farm ministry expects overall area under cultivation to show major uptic in most of the states. Union agriculture and food minister Sharad Pawar said on Tuesday that there would be substantial improvement in planting over following one week in wake of good rains in the last three-four days.
The Farm Secretary R K Basu too said on Tuesday that the pause in monsoon in the second week of July was not a cause of concern as yet as crop sowing so far was continuing at a good pace and cumulative figure was significantly better than last year. Rainfall deficit in the first month of the June-Sept monsoon season was 16% but came down to 10% after good rains in first week of July. Since then, however, the figure has again gone up to around 14%.
The IMD had earlier raised its monsoon forecast from 98% to 102% of LPA for current season. It also expected the rainfall to recover in July to 98% of LPA compared with a shortage of 15% in June. The met department is expecting a much better second half of the monsoon compared with the first two months performance.
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