Rain Watch for July 11-17: Uneven shower patterns, sowing improves

Overall, on a cumulative basis, rainfall remained in the 'normal' range, though dipping to a slight deficit. Image: AFP
 
Even as we are in the middle of the wettest period of monsoon, rainfall patterns aren’t encouraging. There are uneven rainfall patterns spread across states with deficit in some regions and surplus in a few. However, the area coverage for sowing of most crops is higher than last year, including for key crops that are facing high inflation currently (pulses and paddy). 
 
Overall, on a cumulative basis, rainfall remained in the 'normal' range, though dipping to a slight deficit.  As of July 14, rainfall is 2 percent below the long period average (LPA), as per Barclays analysis of Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) data. This compares with 1.8 percent surplus rainfall as on July 7. There has been excessive rain in select northern and central states in the past week, contrasted with deficient rains in eastern region.


 
As of July 8, the overall acreage or area under sowing was 37.9 million hectares, which is 14 percent higher than 2023. In particular, areas sown under pulses, oilseeds, cotton and paddy have progressed well, while those in coarse cereals are lagging.


 
Summer crop or kharif production, which has a 50 percent share of food grain production, is largely dependent on rainfall during monsoon. Good rainfall generally helps boost rural sentiment and provides some uplift to rural spending. Although food has a weight of 46 percent in the consumer-based inflation or retail inflation, UBS estimates 22 percent of the CPI basket is directly impacted by the monsoons. Normal rainfall generally contains food price pressure that has remained above 8 percent year-on-year (YoY) since last November.



Also read: Rain Watch for July 4-10: Monsoon bridges gap, kharif sowing begins
 
Meanwhile, Haryana, Punjab, West Bengal and Odisha, which are major paddy producer states, are facing deficient rains in the range of 30-45 percent below the LPA, as of July 14.


 
“While Haryana and Punjab have adequate irrigation coverage, paddy is a water-intensive crop, hence, rains need to pick up significantly over the next few weeks in these states to support crop growth,” says Barclays.  


 
With excess rainfall, particularly in the northern regions in the past week, reservoir levels are gradually rising. As of July 11, storage in 150 reservoirs stood at about 26 percent of total capacity, which is higher than 22 percent in the previous week. This translates to 79 percent of the live storage of the corresponding period of last year and 90 percent of the normal storage.