Sowing for rabi begins, not wheat

Sowing of rabi (winter) crops for the 2012-2013 season has kicked off on a sluggish note. Official sources said that sowing of wheat, the biggest crop grown during the rabi season, has not started from any part of the country yet.

According to a preliminary assessment by the agriculture department, rabi crops have been sown in around 4.05 million hectares of land till Friday. This is 14.31 per cent less than last year.

“Although sowing has begun on a slow pace, it will gather steam once the festivals are over,” said a senior government official.

Among other major crops, pulses have been sown in around 1.87 million hectres till Friday, around 31 per cent less than last year, while oilseeds have been planted in around 2.18 million hectares, just 0.16 million hectares more than last year.

“There was expectation that the sowing of pulses and oilseeds would be more at the start of the rabi season. Nevertheless, it is too early to predict any trend,” experts pointed out.

India’s 2012 southwest monsoon (June-September) was around 92 per cent of the long period average (LPA). Bulk of the rains happened after August and the rains withdrew almost 10 days behind its normal schedule.

LPA is the average rainfall across the country during the four-month southwest monsoon season during a 50 year period starting from 1951.

The late withdrawal of monsoon had raised hopes that sowing of rabi crops would be more in the initial days of the season.