After last year’s heat wave, India’s wheat farmers are struggling with untimely rain this year
The central government is reviewing the extent of damage caused by the heavy rain in March and has decided to continue the ban on wheat export imposed in 2022.
India’s wheat crop this year has been hit because of excessive rainfall in the crucial month of March, when the crop enters the vital grain-filling stage and gets ready for harvesting in April.
Last year, the excessive temperatures in March, the steepest since the country’s temperature record-keeping began in 1901, impacted wheat production which was lower than the expected production, by around 4.5 million tonnes. India was aiming for 111.3 million tonnes of wheat production in 2022, but the final realisation was not more than 106.8 million tonnes.
In 2023, India was aiming for production of 112 million tonnes of wheat production, 5% higher than last year. It had sown wheat over 34 million hectares across the country, which is marginally higher than last year.
But as the crop was getting ready, it suffered a major blow because of the excess rainfall in several important wheat-producing states.
For instance, Punjab and Haryana, received unexpected rainfall which was in excess by 205% and 220% respectively, between March 1 and April 3, according to data from India Meteorological Department. The two states accounted for almost 74% of total wheat procured by India for its public distribution system in 2022.
Talking about the impact of the unseasonal rainfall, Gurvinder Singh, director of the Department of Agriculture, Punjab, told Mongabay-India that rainfall flattened almost 40% of the 3.5 million hectares of wheat crop in the state and farmers will have to put more manual labour to retrieve the production. In about 100,000 hectares of the wheat growing area of the state, crop loss is between 70% and 100%, he added.
He said that Punjab had a record wheat production of 17 million tonnes in 2021. “But in 2022, it came down to 13.9 million tonnes due to the heat wave. We may not cross last year’s figure this year, too,” he added.
Gurvinder Singh’s other worry is the quality of the crop. The water stagnation in fields, following the excessive rain, means that the moisture level in the final produce is likely to be higher than the permissible limit of 14%.
In Haryana, the other primary wheat producing state, Rohtas Kumar, additional director, Department of Agriculture, Haryana, told Mongabay-India that nearly 100,000 farmers from the state have registered at the e-Fasal Kshatipurti portal, where farmers apply for government benefits, and requested for compensation for their damaged crops. The total amount of compensation requested is for an area of nearly 500,000 hectares.
Kumar said that the wheat crop in Haryana was sown over 2.3 million hectares, which means a little over 20% of the crop area in the state is under stress due to recent rainfall. “The state may not achieve the targeted production of 11 million tonnes,” he said.
In Uttar Pradesh, which, as per the India Meteorological Department, received 251% of excess rainfall between March 1 and April 3, 35,480 hectares area is calculated to have more than 33% of crop loss so far, data released by the state government revealed. The state’s total wheat area this year is close to 9.5 million hectares, the highest in the country.
The damage was also significant in Rajasthan, which received 353% of excess rainfall in March. As per the latest media reports, 388,000 hectares of the wheat crop out of a total sown area of 2.96 million hectares have been impacted due to the untimely rainfall in the state.
