A good monsoon in the previous year — the second one in row — will help the country to a record foodgrain harvest of over 279.5 million tonnes (mt) in 2017-18, which was nearly 5 mt or 1.6 per cent more than the previous year, according to the third advance estimates of food and commercial crops released by the Agriculture Ministry on Wednesday. In comparison, the total foodgrain output in 2016-17 was at 275.11 mt.

While the total output of both rice and wheat climbed new heights of 111.52 mt (109.7 mt) and 98.61 mt (98.51 mt) respectively, the bigger surprise was on the pulses front whose production crossed 24.5 mt — up 1.4 mt from 23.13 mt in 2016-17.

Pulses gain

While gram output went up nearly by 2 mt to 11.16 mt, the production of arhar was estimated to have slumped by about 0.5 mt to 4.18 mt in 2017-18. The output of urad too was projected to be at a record 3.28 mt — up from 2.83 mt in 2016-17.

While the kharif pulses production failed to match that of the previous season, the output of rabi pulses shot up by nearly 2 mt, helping to surpass the set target.

The production of coarse cereals too recorded an increase of over one million tonne to 44.87 mt. Barley, whose production was a record 26.88 mt, accounted for most of this increase in yield, the data showed.

Oilseeds production came down to 30.64 mt (31.28 mt) on account of slump in soyabean output which fell to 10.9 mt from 13.16 mt in the year before.

An impressive 20 per cent increase in the groundnut production at 8.94 mt (7.46 mt) wasn’t enough to pull the overall oilseeds output up.

Cash crops

Sugarcane production during 2017-18 was also projected to cross 355 mt (306 mt). At 34.86 million bales, cotton production too was estimated to be 7 per cent more than 32.58 million bales recorded in 2016-17, the data showed.

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