What the summer of 2024 has in store for India’s farmers
Rabi marketing season (RMS 2024-2025) started on April 1. Despite the concerns being expressed, India is likely to harvest record-high wheat, chana, and mustard crops. The prediction of heat waves in the April-to-June period will not have much impact on these crops as the crops are already in the maturity phase.
Most of the mustard crop has already been harvested. So, rather than the heat, the real concern of the
farmers would be untimely rain and hailstorms in the next two to three weeks. In fact, dry weather would be welcomed by the farmers who would still remember the hailstorm in March 2015 when the standing rabi crops were hit and there was large-scale damage to standing crops.
Concerns over wheat
In the last two years, the weather in February and March has been erratic.In February 2022, there was an unusually high temperature which hit the wheat output and brought wheat procurement in RMS 2022-2023 to just 18.79 million tonnes (mt). The government managed its public distribution system by reducing wheat allocation and increasing the same for rice.
Read more: https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/what-the-summer-of-2024-has-in-store-for-indias-farmers-2964233
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