01 September 2022, New Delhi: The Kharif season sowing in India started with steady rainfall in patches across the country. As of this week, a total of 1045 lakh hectare have been sown as per the report released by the Ministry of Agriculture.
States have witnessed light rainfall across June and July which lead to a very long sowing window. By August month the monsoon became erratic leaving some parts with drought and others with excess rains.
Acreages under Paddy (367.5 lakh hectares) are not encouraging since the crop is behind its last year coverage by 6%. This may be due to planned diversification in Punjab and Haryana to other crops to save ground water level. The total targeted acreage for paddy in Kharif 2022 as per the Ministry of Agriculture is 415.8 lakh hectare which brings the shortfall to 13% when compared to planned acreage.
Acreages under Pulses (127.1 lakh hectares) have shown a shortfall of 5% with respect to last years area coverage. At the same time, there has been an increase acreage reported in cotton with 124.5 lakh hectares been reported.
Below table shows major crops under Kharif, their Normal Area (DES) which is an average of last 5 years released by Directorate of Economics & Statistics, area sown in 2022, area sown in 2021, absolute increase / decrease and growth over last year in percentage.
