Now bumper harvest to add to Govt’s feelgood factor

The Government has found another reason to spread the ‘‘feel good’’ feeling: India is likely to have a bumper grain prod...

The Government has found another reason to spread the ‘‘feel good’’ feeling: India is likely to have a bumper grain production of 208-215 million tonnes this year as compared to 183 million tonnes last year. Unfortunately, the government has the monsoon, and not its policies to thank. These estimates for 2003-04 were announced at the National Conference on Agriculture being held here.

‘‘This is one of the best agricultural seasons in a number of years and the estimate is that foodgrain production will be 208 million tonnes and oilseed production will be 23-23.5 million tonnes including 5.8-5.9 million tonnes of mustard,’’ said Agriculture Commissioner C.D. Mayee.

He said these were the initial estimates including that of 73-74 million tonnes of wheat, but if the weather remains favourable there will be a sudden jump in overall production to around 212-215 million tonnes.

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According to the figures from kharif production of 2003-04, it is estimated that production was 108.45 million tonnes. Though kharif rice production remained moderate, kharif coarse cereal production jumped by 39 per cent. The production of pulses was also 42 pc higher than last year.

Oilseed production increased by 15 million tonnes and cotton by 13 million bales. For the current Rabi season, prospects are optimistic with area covered under wheat and coarse cereals being normal.

The monsoon was 102 per cent of the long-period average and fairly well distributed apart from a few areas in interior Karnataka and Kerala. The good part about the monsoon was that though 127 districts were deficient, only 62 of these were the ones that were drought-stricken in 2002, thereby substantially mitigating the impact of last year’s drought.

The Government is consulting Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) on devising ways and means to diversify cultivation to oilseeds-pulses.

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