India's summer crop sowing down on lower rainfall

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Indian farmers have planted summer-sown crops on 85.456 million hectares as of Aug. 3, down 1.8 percent from a year earlier, government data showed.

Cotton sowing was down 4 percent, while rice planting lagged 4.2 percent.

Monsoon rainfall was 10 percent lower than normal as of Aug. 5, but in some states such as Manipur the rainfall deficit was as high as 64 percent, data compiled by the state-run India Meteorological Department (IMD) showed.

India's monsoon rains, a crucial element for the country's farm output, are likely to be below average in 2018, after the country experienced tepid rainfall during the first half of the season.

The following figures are provisional and are in million hectares. Some numbers have been rounded, and the table does not include all crops.

(Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)