Date:22/11/2008 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2008/11/22/stories/2008112250951700.htm

Back Rabi acreage up in all crops barring wheat

Our Bureau

New Delhi, Nov. 21 With winter steadily setting in, farmers have already sown almost a third of the normal area under rabi.

According to the Agriculture Ministry’s latest Crop Weather Watch Report, released here on Friday, wheat planting has so far been done on 83.78 lakh hectares (lh), which is marginally lower than the 84.99 lh covered during the same period last year.

While acreage has gone up in Haryana (from 17.50 lh to 18 lh), Gujarat (1.90 to 2.96), Rajasthan (1.57 to 4.84) and Karnataka (1.80 to 1.91), it is trailing behind in Punjab (22.70 to 21.45), Madhya Pradesh (15.78 to 15.24), Uttar Pradesh (14.49 to 12.13) and Maharashtra (3.21 to 3.14).

The normal time for sowing wheat is from mid-November to mid-December.

In case of planting after mid-December, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has estimated average per hectare yields to drop from 4.5 tonnes to 3.6 tonnes in North-West India (Punjab, Haryana, Western Uttar Pradesh), from 4.3 to 3.7 tonnes in central India (Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat), and from 3.8 to 3.1 tonnes in Eastern UP-Bihar.

The yields could go down still further in these regions to 2.8 tonnes, 2.6 tonnes and 2.4 tonnes, respectively if sowing takes place after late-December. “With minimum temperatures slated to fall over North-West and adjoining central India, much of the area will be covered within the next couple of weeks,” Ministry officials said.

Meanwhile, in most other crops, there has been a significant jump in acreages – be it jowar, maize and barley or oilseeds (rapeseed-mustard, sunflower and groundnut) and pulses (gram, lentil and peas).