40 Day Report of Monsoon in India and its Impact on Agriculture. #MonsoonInIndia

40 Day Report of Monsoon in India and its Impact on Agriculture.
This year for the first time I am going to write about the topic which is most talked about in the present condition and that is the Monsoon in the Country. I have in my older posts discussed about the importance of Rainfall for India and the stages of Monsoon. But this time in today’s post I would want to give an update on the present scenario of Rainfall in India and the its effect on Agriculture.
First let me give you the overview of South West Monsoon in India till Yesterday. As per the data released by IMD the rainfall in India is at 9% deficit and that’s a big worrying point. IMD predicted Monsoon to be in the range of 97%-103% now it is at 91%. July is the month which normally sees highest rainfall in the Country and we are in deficit. Though the 9% looks a small number the deficit when it comes to individual states is ranging anywhere between 15-50%. Yes, we cannot rule out the Rainfall picking up in the states and that taking the overall deficit to normal but at this moment India needs more rain which should happen in all the parts not in one singular place like how it is happening in past few days in Mumbai.
Let me now give you data of the rainfall in different states of India. If you see the rainfall status in India there are 18 states which are under deficit rainfall. Of the all the deficit states most of them are the states which are agriculturally driven states. The other states that are having a normal or excess rainfall don’t run much of agriculture activities. States like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha and Gujarat which are deep into deficit rainfall have lot of dependency on Agricultural activities. UP has highest deficit of 49% and others states have average deficit rainfall of 20%. This way the Rice in Kharif crop looks very problematic. The states where we have normal rainfall also are problem because the rains are happening mostly in the Urban parts not in the rural parts where the rainfall is required the most. I am attaching a screenshot which will give you more insights on the different states rainfall data till yesterday. Region wise if you see apart from South India region no other region is doing well. Reason being the Bay of Bengal wing of Monsoon which covers Northern and Central India is doing very bad and the Arabian sea wing of Monsoon is doing good.
Now other most important point to look into is the Crop Sowing which is directly related to Rainfall. In the other screenshot all the details of Crop Sowing in different states is given. So, if you look at the overall crop sowing in India. I will only discuss about the Rice crop as it is the highest consumed cereal in our country. As on 5th July 2018 the required sowing of paddy crop should be 85.65 hectares but the actual value is at 67.25 which is 22% deficit. Hectare here is equal to 2.47 acres. So in acres India needed to hit the target area of 211.55 acres but presently it stands at 166.0 acres. That’s a shortfall of 45.44 acres of Land. More into numbers – Each acre on an average gives 850 kgs of rice. That means we are now at deficit of 15,640 kgs which will have big impact on the prices thus leading to higher food inflation.
We know that in the last week itself Govt had raised the MSP(Minimum Support Price) from 1550 to 1750 which is 200 rupees increase. This step by Govt is going to increase the prices which will take the inflation upwards and adding to that this deficit sowing of Crop resulting in less production will increase prices more taking inflation more higher. Certainly this will not help the economy and India needs good amount of rainfall in the places like UP, Bihar and the other states where the rain is required! I will wait till 10th of August to give my final verdict on the amount of shortfall we will have in this season. For now, I can only hope that it will start raining in Central India and Northern India too and not just in Mumbai!!!

Published by Sriram

A Teacher trying to Learn new things and explore the world each day! Believe in Happiness by the virtue of sacrifice and forgiveness.

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