Deficient southwest monsoon impact mitigated by increased irrigation, says RBI Bulletin

The deficient southwest monsoon (SWM) will not impact major crops in the kharif season as most states have augmented the irrigated land coverage.

While the impact of SWM rainfall is statistically significant, it has come down recently. Furthermore, the impact is found to be relatively less pronounced in periods with more irrigation against less irrigation, indicating that irrigation mitigates the adverse consequences of monsoon deficiency on agricultural production, said the RBI Bulletin.

While the states remain vulnerable to rainfall volatility, RBI’s bulletin said they built irrigation facilities to reduce their dependence on SWM. The country’s total annual useable water resource through rivers and groundwater is estimated to be 1,121 billion cubic metre (BCM).

Almost all states have seen an increase in their net sown area irrigated over the last three decades. Among 17 major states, 9 states have over 50 per cent of their net sown area irrigated as compared to only 3 states during 1990, it said.

Of the overall arable land, the growth in irrigation in Punjab has increased from 85 per cent in 1990 to 100 per cent in 2020, while that of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh has increased to 95 per cent and 85 per cent from 75 per cent and 65 per cent. In Tamil Nadu, it was up from 43 per cent to 58 per cent, said the Bulletin.

With improvements in irrigation facilities, the relationship between rainfall deviation and the production of major crops does not appear to be direct.

In the last three decades, the trends in rainfall deviation from normal and growth in rice production across states have revealed that several states have increased rice production even during deficient rainfalls.

Since 2016, overall foodgrains and rice production have continued to expand yearly despite lower-than-normal rainfall in 4 out of last 6 years. However, coarse grains, pulses and oilseeds production remained volatile during this period, said the bulletin.

Coarse grain production has continued to decline over the years, notwithstanding deficient and surplus rainfalls, possibly owing to substitution of crop.

SWM remains important for kharif foodgrains production and rabi foodgrains as they help the latter by improving moisture levels and augmenting reservoir levels.

However, the empirical analysis indicates that the elasticity of agricultural production to SWM has come down in the recent period, suggesting an increase in agriculture’s resilience to monsoon shocks.

Further, the spatial distribution of monsoon remains uneven, contributing to crop production volatility. For instance, SWM was 0.7 per cent below the long-period average  at all India level in 2021 and kharif foodgrains production increased by 3.2 per cent during the year.

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