With the patchy progress of southwest monsoon rains —8% below ‘normal’ at the pan-India level by July 6— sowing of Kharif crops was 14% below the last year’s level as of Friday. Rice and cotton have been the most affected crops.

The rain deficiency in rice-growing West Bengal, Odisha and Chhattisgarh has been quite high and has had an adverse impact on sowing area of paddy, the main Kharif crop with a share of nearly 60% in the normal acreage.

However, the government reiterated on Sunday that last year’s record foodgrain output of 279.51 million tonnes would be surpassed this year. “The shortfall in acreage will be made up in the coming weeks. We will definitely exceed last year’s production,” told the agriculture secretary Shobhana Pattanayak. He expressed confidence that a “favorable monsoon” and higher MSPs would increase crop productivity.

West Bengal, the country’s largest producer of rice, and Chhattisgarh have received 22% and 21% below-normal rainfall, respectively, while Odisha got 30% fewer rains until July 6, according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD) data.

Cotton sowing too has also been severely affected as the main growing region of Saurashtra in Gujarat has received large rain deficiency during the June 1-July 6 periods. The Saurashtra and Kutch regions have got only 30.2 mm rainfall against the normal rainfall of 124.6 mm. The cotton acreage in Gujarat dropped to 0.49 million hectares as of July 6 from 1.27 million hectares in the year-ago period. The country’s total cotton acreage too slipped nearly 24% to 5.46 million hectares.

The overall deficiency in monsoon rainfall in the east and north-east region of India is 21% and in central India, it is 9%. After getting stalled for more than 15 days last month, the south-west monsoon covered the entire country 17 days earlier than its normal schedule. Monsoon reaches Sriganganagar in Rajasthan, which is considered to be its last outpost in India, normally on July 15.

Till Friday, the area sown of all kharif crops was lagging behind by 14.17% at 333.76 Lakh Hectare against 388.89 lakh hectare a year ago, as per the agriculture ministry’s data. Rice acreage was down 15% at 67.25 lakh hectare, while that of pulses was down 20% at 33.60 lakh hectare. Even area under coarse cereals was down 13.45% at 57.35 lakh hectare and acreage of oilseeds was lower by 13.42% at 63.59 lakh hectare. Among cash crops, the area sown to cotton was down 24% at 54.60 lakh hectare till last week of the 2018-19 Kharif season when compared with 71.82 lakh hectare in a year ago.

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