Rabi sowing starts better than last year; but wheat sowing yet to begin

Harvesting of paddy has been delayed in the main states of Punjab, Haryana, UP and even Madhya Pradesh because of late withdrawal of southwest monsoon which has left the fields wet

The sowing of rabi crops continued at their steady pace as farmers hurried to make the best use of the residual soil moisture owing to rain in October.

However, wheat sowing is yet to start due to a delayed harvest of paddy in the northern states.

Paddy harvesting has been delayed in the main states of Punjab, Haryana, UP and even Madhya Pradesh because of the late withdrawal of the southwest monsoon, which has left the fields wet.

Post-monsoon rain in India between October 1 and 21, according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), was almost 73 per cent more than normal with the bulk of it falling in UP, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh.

Traders say in many places farmers are waiting for a few more days of bright sunshine before going in for extensively harvesting paddy so that they can get full value for the crop.

Paddy, with a high moisture content, or of an inferior quality owing to a prolonged exposure to moisture, fetches lower prices in the market.

In some places the buyer insists that the paddy is adequately dried, which leads to an additional expenditure for the farmer.

Wheat is sown in around 30.5 million hectares each year, but this year, the talk in trade circles is that there could be a 10-15 per cent increase in acreage because farmers may shift from crops such as chana and lentil (masur) to wheat.

Among other crops, though it is early days, the acreage of mustard, which is the biggest oilseed grown during the rabi season, is almost 41 per cent more than last year while that under grams is around 86 per cent more than last year.

Mustard is sown in around 6.4 million hectares in the full season and market sources say like in wheat, here too, there could be a 5-10 per cent jump in the area covered this year.

Meanwhile, in the case of wheat, the Centre last week raised the minimum support price (MSP) for the 2023-24 marketing season by 5.46 per cent.

With the hike, the new MSP of wheat will be Rs 2,125 per quintal as against Rs 2,015 per quintal earlier.

In absolute terms, this is the highest increase since 2017-18.

However, despite the hike, market players are wary whether farmers will be convinced to sell the next crop to the government if the situation does not change dramatically because the open market rate of wheat is Rs 400-500 per quintal more than even the revised MSP.

This year due to market prices being higher than the MSP, farmers opted to sell their produce to private players, leading to an almost 57 per cent drop in official procurement to around 19 million tonnes (MT) as against 43.3 MT last year.

In a related development, a delegation of flour millers recently met senior government officials to request them to liquidate a part of inventories held by the government in November-December because open market prices have jumped in the past few days.

“We don’t expect the government to sell 7-8 million tonnes of wheat from its stocks as it did last year but some support is needed because prices are soaring,” a senior flour miller said.

Rabi sowing till October 21, 2022 (in million hectares)

Crops	2022	2021	% Change
Wheat	0	0	0
Rice	0.27	0.19	42.11
Gram	0.39	0.21	85.71
Mustard	1.51	1.07	41.12
Total*	2.51	1.72	45.93

NOTE: Total Might Not Match as All Crops Haven't Been Included

Wheat sowing has not been reported yet

Source: Government of India