By Rajendra Jadhav
MUMBAI (Reuters) -Indian farmers have accelerated the planting of summer-sown crops such as paddy, soybeans, cotton and corn, following above-average monsoon rainfall in July which increased the moisture levels required for sowing, according to government data.
The monsoon is the lifeblood of India’s nearly $4 trillion economy, delivering almost 70% of the rainfall needed to water farms and replenish aquifers and reservoirs.
Nearly half of India’s farmland is not irrigated and depends on the annual June-September rains for crop growth.
The country has so far received 6% more rainfall than normal since the start of monsoon season on June 1, which helped farmers to plant summer crops on 70.83 million hectares (175 million acres) by July 18, up 4.1% from the last year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare.
Farmers have planted 17.67 million hectares with rice paddy, up 12.4% on the same period last year, as a hike in support prices prompted farmers to expand the area.
India is the world’s biggest exporter of rice and the top importer of edible oils such as palm oil and soyoil.
Farmers planted soybean on 11.17 million hectares, down from last year’s 11.9 million hectares but having accelerated in the last week. Corn was planted on 7.1 million hectares, up from 6.17 million a year earlier.
The cotton area was 3.4% lower at 9.86 million hectares, having also seen an increase in the past few days, while pulses planting rose by 2.3% from a year ago to 8.2 million hectares.
The farm ministry keeps updating the provisional sowing figures as it gathers more information from the state governments.
Farmers are inclined to expand the area under paddy as the government buys large quantities at state-fixed support prices, which is not the case for other crops, said a Mumbai-based dealer with a global trading firm.
“So far, the weather’s been pretty good for crops, except in a few parts of north-eastern India. If the monsoon stays strong next month, we could be looking at a bumper harvest across the country,” he said.
(Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav; Editing by David Holmes)
