After kharif, coarse cereals face trouble in rabi season

The plans of distributing nutritious coarse cereals along with grain under the proposed Food Security Act could run into rough weather, as overall output of these is expected to be poor this year.

An indication has come from below-normal sowing of coarse cereals like jowar, bajra, barley and maize during the current rabi season. These cereals saw a two million tonne shortfall in output in the kharif season.

The government’s estimates of 2011-2012 had pegged coarse cereals’ output during kharif at 30.42 million tonnes. The drop was due to poor rains in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka.

The situation seems unlikely to change much during this rabi season, despite the fact that coarse grains are normally planted in arid land.

Department of agriculture data show that the area under coarse cereals was almost 424,000 hectares less at 4.78 million hectares till December 9 this year, as against last year.

Maharashtra saw the the biggest drop, with the area under jowar (sorghum) estimated to be around 3.53 million hectares, almost 347,000 ha down from last year.

The government plans to substantially augment its annual coarse cereal procurement, along with wheat and rice, to meet its obligations.

Distribution of coarse cereals to poor sections has also been strongly favoured by many civil society organisations. The proposed food bill seeks to distribute these cereals at ~1 per kg to priority category households.

In the 2010-2011 crop marketing year that ended in October, the government procured 127,825 tonnes of coarse cereals largely comprising jowar, bajra, maize and ragi. In 2009-10, it had procured 406,828 tonnes.

Among other main rabi crops, the acreage under wheat was around 180,000 hectares down till last week. Sowing of oilseeds is marginally down as compared to the same period last year. While pulses acreage was 140,000 hectares more than last year, till last week.