India upbeat on oilseed crop after late rains

Late rains in key oilseed-growing regions have improved the prospects of India's winter crop and the resultant soil moisture would boost the size of the summer crop, traders said on Wednesday.
The winter crop is sown in July and harvested by late November, while the summer crop is ready for harvest in April. Groundnut and soyabean are the main winter crops, while rapeseed forms bulk of the summer crop.
"We are in for a bumper summer crop," said Sandeep Bajoria, president of the Central Organisation for Oil Industry and Trade. "We might surpass last year's summer oilseed crop size of 10 million tonnes."
India, the world's top edibles oil buyer, imports 40 percent of its annual needs of 11 million tonnes. It buys palm oils from Malaysia and Indonesia and soft oils from Argentina and Brazil.
The oilseed sector in India, the world's fourth-largest vegetable oil producer, has a turnover of about $15 billion a year. The country has 1,500 oil mills, 600 solvent extraction units and 500 refining units.
Traders said winter oilseed output was expected to be at least a million tonnes lower than last year's 13.9 million tonnes due to erratic rains in the middle of the June-September monsoon season.
Sowing in oilseed-growing states including Gujarat, Madly Pradesh and Maharashtra was delayed and staggered, and those states got almost no rain at all during the sowing month of July.
But late rains in September and October have made up for that shortfall to some extent and the soil moisture would help the next summer crop, traders said.
The farm ministry said crop scientists have advised farmers to make the best use of the moisture, recommending sowing of mustard and rapeseed in the northern plains.
Bajoria said late rains have helped sowing of summer crops, mainly rapeseed in the largest-growing state of Rajasthan.
Govindbhai Patel, a leading oilseed trader in Junagadh in the leading groundnut-growing state of Gujarat, said he had revised upwards his previous crop estimates after the recent rains.
"After a field survey, I have arrived at a figure of 1.7 million tonnes of groundnut output in Gujarat, against my earlier estimate of 1.2 to 1.3 million tonnes," Patel said.