With the arrival of the monsoon, kharif sowing operations have begun in over 7.83 million hectares of land, which is 7.2% of the average annual coverage under kharif crops.
The Financial Express
June 13, 2023
With the onset of a delayed southwest monsoon, sowing operations during the kharif or summer season for paddy, coarse cereals, pulses, oilseeds, and cotton are expected to pick up. June and July are crucial months for sowing. To ensure a robust crop output, the government has announced higher minimum support prices by 6 to 10.4%, which is the highest increase since FY19.
Elevated MSPs are intended to ensure remunerative prices for farmers, who not so long ago were agitating for a legal guarantee for this regime and extending it to more and more crops backed by open-ended procurement. Such purchases, however, are a reality for paddy, pulses, and to lesser extent, for cotton.
Higher MSPs are also intended to encourage crop diversification, which is why the hikes are the largest for pulses like moong, oilseeds and nutri-cereals. The margin to farmers over costs of production are the highest for nutri-cereals like bajra, followed by tur/arhar, soyabean, and urad, while for the rest of the kharif crops, the expected margins are estimated to be at least 50%.
While the announced MSPs clearly are intended to address farmer concerns—especially with national elections less than a year away—the fact remains that they introduce a cost-plus determination to prices that will be inflationary by 10-12 bps above the forecasted headline inflation of 5.1% for FY 24, according to RBI’s deputy governor.
With the arrival of the monsoon, kharif sowing operations have begun in over 7.83 million hectares of land, which is 7.2% of the average annual coverage under kharif crops. There is a marginal decline in the sowing of paddy, pulses, and oilseeds, while there has been a rise in bajra, maize, cotton, and sugarcane.
With the progress of rainfall in the next couple of weeks, there is bound to be an uptick in the acreage devoted to summer crops. A favourable augury in this regard is that the prices of pulses and oilseeds are ruling above their respective MSPs.
As farmers respond to price signals, the prospect of higher realisations is bound to result in more sowing of such crops. Reports from Maharashtra indicate that farmers are planning to sow more tur/arhar as an intercrop with soyabean by planting one row of tur/arhar after every three rows of soyabean.
Although cotton prices are also higher than MSPs for medium staple fibre, it is not inevitable that farmers would plan to step up cultivation of this long duration crop due to uncertainties over the monsoon’s progress in the crucial months of June and July. As El Nino conditions have been confirmed, developing in July and adversely impacting rainfall in August-September kharif sowing operations are bound to be impacted.
For such reasons, there is a need for contingency plans so that farmer livelihoods are not affected. Maharashtra has cautioned farmers not to rush for early sowing of kharif crops. Guidelines have been issued to cultivators to first ascertain the intensity of rains before going in for planting of crops.
In Telangana, they are being urged to go in for early sowing where irrigation facilities are available. Contingency plans include developing short-duration crop strains to enable farmers to shift their cropping patterns away from water-intensive crops like paddy. Above all, there is a need to build more irrigation facilities in the rain-fed regions to reduce monsoon dependence.
(Source: www.financialexpress.com)