Summer sowing of pulses sees encouraging rise

The country’s production of summer pulses, in the period between rabi and kharif crops, is expected to be around a million tonnes this season, an almost 10-fold rise over last year.

In 2010-11, overall output of pulses was 18 million tonnes. Around 1,00,000 tonnes were grown during the summer months, as most farmers preferred to keep their land fallow before the kharif sowing started.

Gram and moong are the main summer crops. The present spurt in production of the summer variety might dampen price pressures on pulses, which have been seeing double-digit wholesale price inflation in recent months. Inflation in pulses rose to 11.29 per cent in April, year-on-year, from 10.05 per cent in the previous month.

Till March end (before the summer crop production), total gram output this year was estimated at 7.4 mt, almost 10 per cent less than last year. Due to less supply, the retail price of gram had risen around 10 per cent since January this year to almost Rs 54 per kg in May.

The production of pulses during the summer season is expected to jump due to a 285 per cent rise in sowing over the same period last year. Till April, summer pulses had been sown on a record 1.37 million hectares, as against 0.35 m ha last year.

Till March, India’s total pulses production (kharif and rabi) was estimated at around 17.02 mt, about six per cent less than the output during the same period last year However, the sharp increase in summer production is expected to push total output to a little over 18 mt, very close to last year’s total production of 18.24 mt.

According to official estimates, the biggest rise in sowing of summer pulses this year has happened in Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Odisha. A senior agriculture ministry official said the government would try to encourage farmers to plant more pulses during the seasonal break to further supplement their income. It had been focusing on improving pulses output during the summer season for the last three to four years and officials see this year’s development as their efforts having borne some fruit. “We have conducted lots of field presentations and area-specific programmes to drive home the need to plant pulses during the summer season as well,” said the official.

Some added that benign weather during the spring season, with mild bouts of rain in the northwestern parts, had helped improve sowing for summer pulses. “We had an extended winter season, with an unusually cool April. All these factors would definitely have contributed in raising the area under summer pulses,” another official said.

Adding: “In some places, farmers would have exhausted all their pulses’ seeds in the summer months itself. It would be interesting to watch whether they show the same commitment in the coming kharif as well.”