A 6.6 per cent overall surplus monsoon rainfall till now may not seem bad at all for India's kharif crop prospects, with attendant implications for food inflation and rural incomes.

But, when this rainfall is not all that spatially well-distributed — which is the case now — it raises a few worries.

The current south-west monsoon season (June-September) has so far seen the country receive an average area-weighted rainfall of 140.8 millimetres (mm), which is more than the ‘normal' 132.1 mm for this period.

But, this nationwide surplus masks the deficient rains in the contiguous belt covering Marathwada (-48 per cent), Vidarbha (-17 per cent), Telangana (-42 per cent), Rayalaseema (-21 per cent) and coastal Andhra Pradesh (-17 per cent), besides the whole of interior Gujarat (- 85 per cent), Saurashtra-Kutch (- 64 per cent) and West Rajasthan (- 38 per cent).

The crops that could take a hit on this count are mainly cotton, oilseeds and onion.

Insufficient soil moisture has halted the progress of groundnut sowing in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, discouraging farmers initially enthused by the high prices fetched by this crop.

Cotton plantings have, likewise, been held up across the South and Central zones — though not in irrigated north-west India, where sowing is complete and more than last year — with farmers desperately waiting for the rains.

Price signals

The price signals this time are especially good in maize and guar, above-average for most oilseeds and onion, and not that good for pulses (where last year's record crop has depressed rates, prompting farmers to switch to cotton, maize and soyabean).

Farmers may not make money — on the scale of the last couple of years — in cotton, basmati rice and sugarcane; but it will still be enough to retain their interest in these crops.

All the above calculations are, however, prone to alteration depending on the way the monsoon progresses.

The disappointing bit is the absence right now of any major depression or low pressure system either in the Arabian Sea or Bay of Bengal that could bring succour to the farmers of Gujarat, interior Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.

The India Meteorological Department has, in fact, predicted rainfall to be ‘below-normal' in the crucial sowing month of July.

What is of consolation, though, is the foodgrain stocks in the Central pool, which are at an all-time-high of 65.6 million tonnes.

Moreover, the entire rice-growing stretch from West Bengal, Orissa and Chhattisgarh to Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab has had good rains. That would help insulate the economy from any serious cereal price pressures.

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