An increase in the estimated yields of paddy and wheat has helped the Government to revise its total foodgrain production projection for 2016-17 by over 2 mt to a record 275.68 mt in its 4th advance estimates, released on Wednesday.

The previous advance estimates, put out in May, projected the total grain yield at 273.38 mt. Total foodgrain production in 2015-16 was 251.57 mt.

The yield of staples — rice and wheat — is expected to go up by nearly 1 mt each to 110.15 mt and 98.38 mt, respectively, in comparison with the 3rd advance estimate, according to the data.

Pulses up

Pulses production too is expected to go up by 500,000 mt to 22.95 mt and the maize yield is pegged marginally higher than the previous estimate at 26.26 mt. What helped pulses production to go up is improved yields estimated from tur and gram, which are projected to be 4.78 mt and 9.33 mt, respectively.

Half a million bales (of 170 kg each) of additional cotton yield is expected as major cotton growing areas in the country received good showers in 2016-17. The total cotton output is projected to be 33.10 million bales as against the 32.58 estimated in May, according to the latest data. The estimated sugarcane yield would also be marginally higher at 306.72 million tonnes.

Oilseeds down

At the same time, the Government corrected the projected output of several important crops, such as oilseeds and coarse cereals. While oilseeds yield is expected to drop further to 32.10 mt from an earlier estimated 32.52 mt, coarse cereals output received a slight revision to 44.19 mt from 44.39 mt.

The poor projections for oilseeds were on account of estimated lower yields of soybean, which as 13.7 mt as against the earlier estimate of 14 mt, and castorseed, whose projections came down to 1.42 mt from 1.54 mt estimated in the 3rd advance estimate.

Coarse cereals, on other hand, will break earlier yield records even at the revised output levels.

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