India's rabi season has begun with mustard sown during October 1-12 at 541,000 hectares compared with 670,000 ha sown a year earlier, government data showed today. | |
| Total winter oilseeds have been sown across 777,000 ha compared with 1.04 million hectares a year ago. |
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| Rabi crops are sown from late September and harvested from February. Mustard and wheat are the most important rabi or winter-sown crops. |
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| The government did not provide any reasons for the lag in sowing. Meanwhile, harvest for the kharif crops has begun in full swing. According to government estimates, kharif oilseeds, coarse cereals and rice sowing had lagged behind last year's level. |
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| Farmers have sown oilseeds over 16.5million hectares so far this year, down 5.5 per cent on year, while coarse cereal sowing is at 20.86 million hectares, down 6.6 per cent from last year. Area under rice had also declined to 36.62 million hectares compared with 36.70 million hectares in the year-ago period. |
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| The government has set the food grain output target for the current crop year to June at 220 million tonne, up from 208.3 million tonne in 2005-06. |
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| However, according to the first advance estimates, kharif grain output has been pegged at 105.2 million tonne. This is over 4 million tonne lower than last year's output. The target was set much higher at 115 million tonne. |
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| Kharif sowing starts June and is usually over by August end. |
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