Rains pour doubt on India's soyabean, cotton, pulses output

Heavy rainfall in India's central and western states in the last two weeks has damaged soyabean, groundnut, cotton and pulse crops in some pockets and experts say if the region gets more rainfall, damage could rise significantly. India's June to September monsoon season stormed in with rainfall well above average early on, which allowed farmers to cultivate summer-sown crops on a larger area and ahead of the normal schedule, raising hopes of bumper harvests.
But as the rains persisted, bringing 17 percent more water than average in the first two months, concerns grew output could be hit in the country, a leading producer of grains, cotton, sugar, pulses, tea, spices and rubber. India exports most of its agricultural commodities, but any shortfall in production could trim those sales and force the world's second-most populous country to increase imports of some goods such as edible oils.
While the full extent of the damage for many crops will only be known when harvesting starts in mid-September, early indications are that soyabean, India's main summer-sown oilseed, was the worst-affected by the heavy downpours. "The soyabean crop has been damaged in some areas due to water logging. Overall vegetative growth of crop is lower than normal as most of the time, the weather was cloudy," S. K. Srivastava, director of the state-run Directorate of Soyabean Research, told Reuters.
Indian farmers had planted soyabeans on 11.73 million hectares by July 25, compared with normal area of 8.87 million hectares by then. Top soyabean grower Madhya Pradesh state received 92 percent more rainfall than normal last week and since the start of the monsoon on June 1 it has had 76 percent more rain than normal.
The western state of Maharashtra, the second-biggest producer of soyabean and cotton and the biggest producer of pulses, has swooned under 55 percent more rainfall so far. The cotton crop has also been hurt in India's top producer, Gujarat, as last week it received 57 percent more rainfall than normal. India is the world's second-biggest producer and exporter of the fibre.