India's summer crop planting gathers pace as monsoon revives

KONARK: A revival in monsoon rains has accelerated planting of summer-sown crops such as cotton, soybean and rice across much of India, sharply reducing an earlier sowing deficit caused by below-normal rainfall.

India is the world’s largest rice exporter, accounting for about 40% of global shipments and the biggest importer of vegetable oils such as palm oil, soyoil and sunflower oil.

Indian farmers typically sow summer crops in June and July after the annual monsoon reaches the southern state of Kerala. This year, however, the monsoon arrived three days late and its advance across key western farming regions stalled for about two weeks, delaying planting.

Summer crop sowing was nearly a quarter lower than a year earlier at the end of June, but the shortfall has since narrowed to less than 5%, according to data compiled by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare.

Farmers had planted summer-sown crops on 78.7 million hectares as of July 24, compared with 82.6 million hectares a year earlier, the ministry’s data showed.

India monsoon slows; below-average rain seen over next two weeks

The area under rice cultivation stood at 23.4 million hectares, down from last year’s 24 million hectares, the data showed.

“We were waiting for rain before transplanting the seedlings. After we received good rainfall this month, we started paddy transplanting,” said Krishna Beuraa, a farmer from Konark in the eastern state of Odisha.

India’s monsoon rainfall deficit has narrowed to 16% from nearly 40% at the end of June, following widespread rains over the past few weeks, although some regions are still facing rainfall deficits of as much as 40%.

Farmers have planted soybeans on 11.4 million hectares, down 3% from a year ago.

Corn was planted on 7.8 million hectares down 9.7% from the same period last year. The area in which cotton was planted dropped 4% to 9.87 million hectares, while sugar cane area rose 1.5% to 5.76 million hectares.