MUMBAI: India’s monsoon has delivered 1 per cent more rain than normal so far this year, but erratic distribution has flooded some areas and left others in drought, clouding the outlook for key summersown crops more than midway through the season.
The uneven rains could lead to lower food grain output despite bigger planting areas, forcing India to raise imports of edible oils, sugar and pulses, and potentially limiting exports of cotton, rice and feed ingredients, traders said.
“Where it is not necessary, rainfall is abundant. Here, we badly need rains, but we haven’t got them in a fortnight,” said Netaji Surywanshi, a soybean farmer from Maharashtra whose crop on 9 acres has started wilting during a critical growth phase.
Surywanshi’s Marathwada region in central India has received 21 per cent lower rainfall than normal this monsoon — which started on June 1 —while some regions in southern India recorded as much as a 34 per cent shortfall, according to the state-run India Meteorological Department (IMD).
In contrast, areas like western Rajasthan got as much as 126 per cent more rain than normal, leading to floods that killed more than 300 people and displaced millions.
Monsoons deliver about 70 per cent of India’s annual rainfall and are critical for farmers because half of their lands lack irrigation. Farms account for 15 per cent of India’s $2 trillion economy and employ more than half of its 1.3 billion people.
This year, 58 per cent of the country received normal rainfall, and the remainder got excess or deficient rains, according to IMD. “At the time of sowing, rainfall was good, but many regions did not get follow-up showers or received too much rain,” said Harish Galipelli, head of commodities and currencies at Inditrade Derivatives & Commodities. — Reuters
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