India's failed monsoon worst since 1972, hits crops badly

Business Times 31 Aug 09;

(NEW DELHI) India's monsoon rains may improve next month but are still set to be the worst in four decades, and the slow filling of reservoirs is putting winter crops and power supplies at risk.

Monsoon rains, the lifeline for farms that support more than half of India's 1.1 billion people, have been patchy this year and about 40 per cent of India's districts are drought-hit.

Weather office head Ajay Tyagi said September rainfall will improve, but the four-month season since June would still be about 20 per cent below normal, making it the worst since 1972, when there was also a severe El Nino phenomenon in which changes in sea temperature in the Pacific Ocean affects weather.

Low rains have ravaged India's rice crop and hit soybean, cane and groundnut, and disrupted the flow into the main reservoirs that are vital for hydropower generation and winter irrigation.

'Water storage in reservoirs is a very good regionalised and robust indicator of realistic rainfall in the vast catchment. It is a much better and practical parameter as compared to point estimate measured by rain-gauges,' the Farm Ministry said.

Reservoirs are important for hydropower, which accounts for a quarter of India's generation capacity of about 150,000 megawatts. They also provide water to irrigate winter crops.

A 19 per cent rain deficit in 2002 reduced India's summer-sown harvest by 22 per cent and the output of winter-sown crops by 13 per cent. This year, the cane crop in India's top producing state of Uttar Pradesh is expected to shrink about 16 per cent because of drought in most parts of the region, raising prospects of large raw sugar imports by the world's top consumer of the sweetener.

Farm Minister Sharad Pawar said the sugar industry had agreed to provide more sugar at lower prices during the festival season in the next two months to rein in prices.

India's soybean output may drop as much as 19 per cent in the new season because of failed monsoon rains, reducing soymeal export deals to a trickle, traders and industry officials said last Friday.

'We expect about 8-9 million tonnes output,' said Sandeep Bajoria, chief executive of Mumbai-based trading firm Sunvin Group. -- Reuters