Dry beginning

June is becoming drier and this is delaying the sowing of the kharif season

- SHAGUN

THE SOUTHWEST monsoon arrived three days ahead of its schedule on May 29 this year. Still, almost a month later, Ajit Pratap was eagerly waiting for the rains to reach his farm in the Jalaun district of Uttar Pradesh. "I have not been able to sow basmati on my 10-hectare (ha) and the forecast suggests the monsoon rains are not coming to my district before July," he says. By this time last year, the village had not only finished sowing but had also started transplanting paddy from the nursery to the farms.

Some 650 km away, Gulab Kapse of Madhya Pradesh's Betul district was forced to sow his soybean crop twice after 60 per cent of the seeds he had sown between June 9 and 10 failed to germinate. Agriculture in Temni village is totally rain-dependent. "Usually it rains in June, but this time the proper rains started almost a month later, after July 14," he says.

In Maharashtra's Nashik district, Bharat Dighole says farmers could not carry out sowing in his village, Jaygaon, in June. "For the last six-seven years that June is going to waste. We are just starting to sow. By now, nursery preparation should have been completed," he says. Dighole cultivates soybean, maize, cabbage and onion. In eastern India, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Bihar, and Jharkhand have also reported delays in sowing this year because of a patchy monsoon.

June and July are the two most important kharif months, particularly for the 61 per cent of farmers who practice rainfed agriculture, as per National Rainfed Area Authority. A dry June means the ground moisture levels are not conducive for sowing, and the delay can cripple food production.