Widespread rains across the country this week substantially improved planting of most crops, particularly oilseeds and coarse cereals. The total sown area of kharif crops touched 926 lakh hectares (lh) till Friday compared to 966 lh covered in the corresponding week last year, according to data released by the Agriculture Ministry.
Rice is the only exception. The area under rice cultivation was 301 lh, nearly 11 per cent lower than 338 lh planted in the same week last year. Among the States that reported lesser rice sowing were West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha.
The sowing of pulses, on the other hand, crossed what is considered normal for the week, with the planted area touching nearly 121 lh. But it is still 3.5 per cent less than 125 lh planted in the corresponding week of 2018-19. Among the pulses crops, moong reported the highest deficit of 10 per cent in planted area. Arhar, on the contrary, crossed over to the positive territory with total sown area touching 42 lh.
Oilseeds benefited mainly from an impressive recovery in the sowing of soyabean. Its planting has for the first time this week surpassed the area covered in the corresponding period last year. Groundnut too inched towards closing-in the gap, but there is still a deficit of 3 per cent as compared to last year.
There is improvement in the sowing of both bajra and maize this week. The increase in the sowing of these two crops recorded this week pulled up the total coarse cereal area to 159.46 lh, less than 1 per cent less than the same period last year.
The heavy rains lashed across the country with the intensification of the Monsoon have helped fill reservoirs in almost all regions in the country. According to the Central Water Commission, as on Wednesday, 107 reservoirs in the country have 106.68 billion cubic metres of water, which was 25 per cent more than the water storage in the corresponding week last year.
While reservoirs in the Western India have 70 per cent of their storage capacity filled as against a lowly 38 per cent covered same period last year, those in Southern India have 69 per cent of water as compared to 64 per cent in the same period last year. The water storage in North Indian reservoirs is 73 per cent (51 per cent last year), eastern region 48 per cent (52 per cent) and central region 58 per cent (46 per cent).