Farmers are seen bringing in more area under pulses and nutri-cereals like maize in the ongoing summer cropping season. This is even as the acreage under summer crops — grown between rabi and kharif seasons — touched 52.9 lakh hectare (lh) as of April 1, which is an increase of over 7 per cent from 49.14 lh in the same period last year.
About 5 lh have been covered during the past one week, according to data from the Agriculture Ministry .
Overall acreage under summer-sown paddy is lower at 27.89 lh compared with 29.88 lh during the corresponding period last year. About 45,000 hectares got covered under paddy during past one week – Maharashtra 13,000 ha, Tamil Nadu 11,000 ha and Karnataka 8,000 ha — indicating the sowing window is now closing down.
Moong leads
Led by moong, the summer pulses sowing has reached 8.49 lh so far — an increase of 43 per cent over corresponding previous year’s 5.91 lh. The summer moong area is reported at 5.54 lh (4.11 lh), while that of urad has increased to 2.61 lh (1.51 lh).
The pulses acreage stood at 2.61 lh in Odisha, Tamil Nadu 1.85 lh, Uttar Pradesh 0.94 lh, West Bengal 0.76 lh, Gujarat 0.72 lh, Madhya Pradesh 0.49 lh, Chhattisgarh 0.35 lh, Bihar 0.31 lh, Maharashtra 0.15 lh and Karnataka 0.10 lh. .
Nutri cereals and others
The summer-sown coarse cereals acreage is also higher at 7.84 lh from 5.07 lh. Among the coarse cereals, maize area is higher at 5.02 lh from 3.60 lh in the year-ago period.
The sowing area under oilseeds has been reported at 8.69 lh, higher from 8.28 lh in the year-ago period. The sowing area under oilseeds was trailing from year-ago 15 days back and showed an improvement last week and continued the lead this week as well. The acreage in West Bengal is 2.16 lh, Maharashtra 1.21 lh, Gujarat 1.36 lh, Uttar Pradesh 0.96 lh, Karnataka 0.95 lh, Telangana 0.53 lh, Odisha 0.44 lh, Tamil Nadu 0.36 lh, Chhattisgarh 0.33 lh and Andhra Pradesh 0.29 lh.