New Delhi, July 16
The country’s food inventory was sufficient to meet any failure of the monsoon but farmers could be hit by poor rainfall.
Union Agriculture Minister Ajit Singh said the government was ready with a contingency plan in case the monsoon failed but was hopeful that rains would lash North India within the next week.
Area Officers in the Agriculture Ministry were in constant touch with the state authorities in the affected states, particularly Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Karnataka, regarding the development in the monsoon movement which had been either subdued or delayed, he said.
According to Indian Meteorological Department officials, a low pressure area was building up in the Bay of Bengal and rain was expected in the northern parts of the country by early next week, he said.
States had been asked to make arrangements for sowing of alternative crops where it was getting late to sow traditional crops like soyabean and bajra due to delay in the monsoon, he said.
The minister, however, struck a note of caution on the need for a drastic change in the food stocks policy.
Addressing the annual general meeting of the ICAR Society here, Mr Ajit Singh said the problem of surplus foodgrain management being faced at present in the country might be a transitory phase.
“We may have to wait and watch before we take long-run corrective measures to reduce foodgrain inventory, particularly of rice and wheat, through drastic cropping pattern changes”, he said.
The minister said the buffer stock of more than 60 million tonnes of rice and wheat in the godowns might increase to 70 to 75 million tonnes soon and might be more than adequate insurance against natural calamities and the unfavourable monsoon.
On the issue of subsidies, he said the attention was always centred on agriculture. Subsidies given to other sectors far exceeded those given to the agricultural sector. A substantial portion of food subsidy did not go to the farmers but was provided for storage.
On the contingency plan for facing the abnormal monsoon, he said the Centre had given priority to input management to ensure the availability of seed and other necessary inputs for alternative cropping systems.
The states had been advised to ensure efficient use of irrigation so that land use for agriculture was optimised with the available moisture. Facilities for credit and coverage under crop insurance had to be geared up to take care of emerging situation, he said.
The behaviour of the monsoon in the past two weeks has been erratic. During the week ending July 10, the weak monsoon conditions prevailed almost over the entire country and out of 36 Met divisions 25 Met sub-divisions remained practically dry.
The cumulative rainfall from June 1 to July 10 was also deficient in 20 Met divisions covering Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
