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Planting of major summer-sown crops, including rice, oilseeds and cotton, is progressing well as crucial monsoon rains advance across western India, government officials and traders said on Friday.
In India, which has two crop cycles, summer farm products are sown in June and harvested from October. Sowing for winter crops starts in October and the harvest takes place from March. "The beginning is very good and if the monsoon progresses as it has been, we will have good and satisfactory planting in the current season," Agriculture Commissioner N.B. Singh said.
He told Reuters sowing was picking up in western parts of the country, where annual June-September monsoon rains were falling. A Farm Ministry statement on Friday said so far rice has been transplanted over 2.31 million hectares (ha), corn sown over 478,000 ha and cotton on 1.52 million ha. It said oilseed had been sown over 452,000 ha, including 253,000 ha under groundnut and 24,000 ha under soybean.
The monsoon is vital to the health of India's trillion dollar economy as it determines farm output and subsequent rural demand for a range of products. Only 40 percent of cultivable land is irrigated. "Although we are happy that sowing operations are not delayed, it is too early to gauge acreage," Singh said.
Farmers planted rice over 1.16 million ha between May 1-June 15 against 1.07 million ha a year ago, officials said. Cotton sowing is up at 1.52 million ha from 1.47 million ha last year. Sugarcane, with 4.4 million ha sown, covered more than half of cultivated land.

Copyright Reuters, 2007

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