Acreages under paddy among the key kharif crops advanced the most during the previous week as transplantation of the cereal picked up with the revival of monsoon across the country, aided by the low pressures in the Bay of Bengal. Paddy acreages rose by over 50 lakh ha to 177.04 lakh ha, with States such as Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh reporting a rise in transplanted areas.
Sowing of other kharif crops, such as pulses, cotton and coarse cereals, has also picked up and overall kharif acreages are higher than normal for the period and over the previous year. However, oilseeds area has seen a decline, mainly on account of groundnut and soyabean farmers shifting to other remunerative crops such as cotton and pulses, mainly urad.
The revival of monsoons has wiped out the cumulative deficit witnessed so far in the season and precipitation over the country as a whole has clocked in a 2 per cent surplus over the normal rainfall for the period.
Only four of the 36 sub-divisions, accounting for about a 10th of the country’s geographical area, are now deficient, whereas the remaining sub-divisions have witnessed normal-to-large-excess rainfall on a cumulative basis till date.
South interior Karnataka (-25 per cent), Kerala (-23 per cent), Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry (-20 per cent) and Jharkhand (-20 per cent) have witnessed cumulative deficit till date.
The revival of rains has also resulted in improved of the coutnry as on July 20 was 43.732 BCM, which is 28 per cent of the total capacity of these reservoirs, against 23 per cent in the previous week.
States such as Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, West Bengal, Tripura, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are having having better storage than last year, while Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu have lower storage.