Rabi crops sowing crosses 327 lakh hectare

The Dollar Business Bureau 

Notwithstanding the demonetisation and its speculated impact on the country’s agriculture sector, the total sown crops under rabi as on November 25, 2016 grew marginally to 327.62 lakh hectares as against 313.17 lakh hectare till the corresponding period of last year.

“Wheat has been sown/transplanted in 127.15 lakh hectares, rice in 6.82 lakh hectares, pulses in 95.09 lakh hectares, coarse cereals in 34.35 lakh hectares and area sown under oilseeds is 64.21 lakh hectares,” Ministry of Agriculture said in a statement.

The government announced this information at a time when the demonetisation of Rs.500 and Rs.1000 has had a significant impact across all the sectors. Several industry analysts had earlier predicted that the demonetisation will have a significant impact on the country’s agriculture sector, as it was assumed that farmers will be not able to withdraw money for their agriculture needs.

Over the past few weeks, planting of rabi has gone up almost 36% despite the scrapping of high-denomination currency notes.

The comparative figures of the three major crops - wheat, pulses and oilseeds - have registered higher acreage during November 11-25 than the corresponding period last year.

The industry, however, did not rule out the side-effect of the currency demonetisation. They noted that the current figure cannot be considered as complete truth, as several other factors - temperature, timing and water availability – are in accordance with the rabi crop season this year.