Sowing boost in UP as monsoon revives
Heavy rain in Uttar Pradesh over the past five days has ended a largely dry monsoon spell and cheered farmers.
Kharif sowing, including paddy and pulses, was reported to be 17 per cent less last week compared to a year before, with a rain deficit in twothird of the state. The wet spell has reduced this gap, say officials. UP's total sowing last year was 16.6 million hectares, of which kharif crops were 9.4 mn ha, including six mn ha of paddy. According to the agriculture department, the state has now about 7.5 mn ha of aggregate kharif sowing, of which paddy is on 5.2 mn ha.
This amounts to 80 per cent of targeted kharif sowing, the paddy area being 90 per cent of the targeted six mn ha.
“We are confident of achieving our kharif sowing target for the current season in the first week of August,” said Vinod Kumar Singh, agricultural director (statistics and crop insurance).
The weather office has forecast heavy rain in the next 24 hrs in major parts of UP, especially the eastern region. At the moment, despite the recent spell 37 of the state's 75 districts are still categorised as raindeficient. J P Gupta, the local head of the metereological office, says the overall monsoon would be normal in UP this year, with the current spell of heavy rain likely to last another one to two days.
So far, sowing of paddy, pulses, coarse cereals and oilseed crops have been lower than normal. Plating of sugarcane, however, is higher than last year by 288,000 ha, as the cash crop is normally sowed before the monsoon's advent.
Over the past weeks, the government had directed officials to prepare a contingency plan for dealing with a drought, if the monsoon failed to revive. Agriculture minister Surya Pratap Shahi had asked officials to encourage farmers to sow millets and other less water-intensive crops.