Wheat sowing picks up pace as winter sets in over north & central India

Crop sown in around 10.73 million hectares, around 11,000 hectares more than the previous year

With winter setting into several parts of north and central India, sowing of wheat, the most prominent cereal grown during the rabi season, has picked up pace.

Till November 21, the crop was sown in around 10.73 million hectares, around 11,000 hectares more than the previous year at this time.

However, sowing of all other crops — coarse cereals, pulses and oilseeds — were below last year’s levels.

The data showed coarse cereals has been sown on around 3.09 million hectares, around 350,000 hectares less than last year, while pulses have been planted in around 8.07 million hectares, 1.04 million hectares less than last year.

Oilseeds had been planted on around 6.03 million hectares till Friday, as against 6.40 million hectares last year.

In total rabi crops have been planted in around 27.97 million hectares, around 6 per cent less than last year.

“These are early days and we are quite hopeful sowing of rabi crops will pick up pace in the coming days as farmers harvest their delayed sown kharif crops,” an agriculture ministry official said.

Sowing season
Rabi crops are planted on around 62.41 million hectares across the country. Sowing of rabi crops start from middle of November and the harvesting begins from February. The rather comfortable water level in major reservoirs across the country due to delayed withdrawal of southwest monsoon is also expected to boost sowing in the coming days.

Latest data from the Central Water Commission shows that water levels in the 84 major reservoirs across the country stood at 106.82 billion cubic meters, which is 84 per cent of last year’s storage and 99 per cent of the average storage levels of last 10 years.