Hot and dry June pushes back planting across the country
Monsoon showers in July will be crucial to sowing of key summer crops India is counting on to cut inflation, as below-normal rains and hot weather in June pushed back planting in many regions and depleted large water bodies that act as sources of irrigation.
Monsoon showers in July will be crucial to sowing of key summer crops India is counting on to cut inflation, as below-normal rains and hot weather in June pushed back planting in many regions and depleted large water bodies that act as sources of irrigation.
The country is poised to receive above average rainfall during the June-September monsoon, the lifeblood of Asia’s third largest economy, according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), but showers have been 19% below normal so far.
The first of the four-month rainy season, June, is increasingly becoming drier, making the month unfit for farming operations, which begin with the onset of the southwest monsoon. Since 2008, nine years saw below-normal rains during June, according official data analysed by HT.
A hot and dry June has made rice planting difficult because farmers need to keep saplings submerged in water during transplantation. In the soybean, cotton, sugarcane, and pulses-growing belts of central India, rainfall was 29% deficient till June 19.
The Punjab Agricultural University, in an advisory, asked farmers to defer sowing of long-duration paddy until July, when the rains are expected to pick up.
Storage in 150 nationally important reservoirs, critical for irrigation, drinking and power, declined to 21% of the total capacity 178.78 billion cubic meters last week. Robust showers are necessary to replenish them.
In July, rainfall activity is likely to be “near normal to above normal over most parts of the country, except Western Himalayan Region and West Rajasthan”, IMD has said in a latest forecast.
The government has so far not released any sowing data for kharif or summer crops, which account for half of the country’s food supply, but farmers and state officials have said that heatwaves this month have delayed paddy sowing.
To be sure, this depay is rapidly becoming the norm.
“Farmers are following weather information and waiting for July because that is when the rains will become active. Last year too, sowing was delayed,” said Jaipal Singh Nain, a leader of the Bharatiya Kisan Union, from Mukarpur near Haryana’s Kurushektra.
In Madhya Pradesh, sowing of soybean has been tardy and farmers have covered only 5-10% of the area. However, planting is expected to pick up as the monsoon has become active in the state.
July is the most critical month for kharif or summer-sown crops because it accounts for nearly a third of the season’s rainfall and most of the country’s net-sown area gets covered during this month.
“Beyond July, the sowing window becomes narrower and August is not suitable for planting crops like long-duration paddy,” said R Mani of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University.
Robust rains in July will allow farmers to expand acreage under important crops such as paddy, pulses, including tur (pigeon pea) and urad (black gram), onion, soybean, coarse cereals, cotton and sugar. These commodities are critical to keep a lid on elevated food prices.
Two years of extreme weather and a poor monsoon have trimmed output of pulses, onion and wheat. High food inflation, which rose 8.7% in May, has kept the headline inflation above the central bank’s target, preventing a cut in key interest rates.
Onion output dropped 20% in 2023 due to irregular rainfall. A sub-par monsoon last year crimped production of rabi or winter-sown onions in 2024 by another 20% to 19 million tonne, compared to 23.7 million tonne in the previous year. Two consecutive years of low pulses output drove prices 17.1% in May, against an increase of 16.8% in the previous month.
The monsoon will cover northwest India, including the foodbowl states of Punjab and Haryana, by July 3, the weather office has said in a new forecast.
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