Farmers may shift to short-cycle crops on delayed rain

Delay in rainfall is likely to impact crop size and farmers may shift to short-cycle crops like cotton and castor seeds, an industry official said.

“The delay in monsoon has raised concern for several crops sown during the season. The sowing of crops like pulses, oilseeds and maize is already late by over 15 days,” Solvent Extractors’ Association of India’s President Ashok Sethia said here.

Most of the sowing in the country depends on the monsoon as over half of the cultivable land, due to lack of proper irrigation system, is rain-fed.

Any further delay in rainfall is likely to impact the crop size. “Farmers may shift to short-cycle crops like cotton and castor seeds,” Sethia said.

Due to delay in arrival of monsoon, sowing of oilseeds of which the domestic production is on the decline, is also delayed. However, there has not been any major impact on the prices of vegetable oils as country depends heavily on imports, Sethia said.

Oilseeds have a cycle of 105-120 days. If monsoon departs as per its schedule by September 15-30, the yields will be impacted. For a good oilseed crop, rains should come by June 25 to the central India and by June 30 to northern India, failing which the oilseeds crop may be lower than projected, he said.

Sethia pointed out that last year (during November 2007 to October 2008) the country imported 5.6 million tonnes of edible oil worth Rs 24,000 crore. In the current year, the import is likely to surge to the record level of 7.5 million tonnes, a huge burden on the exchequer.

It is essential to increase the availability of vegetable oils from domestic resources by encouraging diversification, increasing productivity and fullest exploitation of non-traditional domestic sources, he said.

This will improve capacity utilisation, increase production and productivity and thereby bring the industry to be fully competitive in the international market.

To achieve these objectives, the Association has suggested for creation of oilseeds and oil development fund by re-imposing custom duty on edible oils and weighted, he said.

“We have also pleaded for granting of general exemption to vegetable oil refining industry from excise duty on by-product and value addition in rice bran processing. We have also requested to reduce the excise duty on food grade hexane being agro-food processing and export-oriented industry identified as a thrust area by the Government,” he said.