Mumbai: Farmers, traders and industry officials said heavy rains in India have damaged major summer-sown crops like rice, soybeans, cotton, pulses and vegetables just before harvest, which are the food crops in Asia’s third-largest economy. can lead to inflation.
Higher food prices could prompt New Delhi to impose additional restrictions on exports of food items such as rice, wheat and sugar, and potentially force the Reserve Bank of India to raise interest rates again.
Narendra Shukla, a 36-year-old farmer from Barabanki in Uttar Pradesh, said, “It has rained so much for the past one week that now we can see the paddy sprouting from the seeds.”
The entire paddy crop, which could have been harvested in a fortnight, has flattened and Shukla is now waiting for the weather to clear so that he can complete the work and plant potatoes.
Uttar Pradesh, the country’s second largest rice producing state, has received 500% more rainfall than normal in October so far.
Dealers said neighboring Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Haryana and Rajasthan have also received heavy rains, damaging summer crops.
This could lead to a drop in yields and a decline in crop quality, as crops were ready to be harvested and at some places the harvested crops were already drying up, said Harish Gallipelli, director, ILA Commodities India Pvt Ltd. , which deals in agricultural commodities.
Indian farmers usually plant summer-sown crops with monsoon rains in June-July, the harvesting of which begins in mid-September.
But this year June this year due to less rainfall which delayed the cycle and the crop is now ready for harvesting, an area of low pressure is bringing heavy rains to the north-western and eastern parts of the country and delayed the end of the south-west monsoon. doing. ,
A senior official of the state-run India Meteorological Department said that northern and eastern regions are likely to receive heavy rainfall in the first half of this week, while southern India may receive above average rainfall.
A Mumbai-based dealer of a global trading firm said the crop damage is likely to further push the already rising food prices.
“There is pressure on the government and RBI to bring down inflation. The fall in crop production numbers means more and longer export curbs,” the dealer said.
RBI has already hiked its benchmark repo rate by 190 basis points this year. Reuters
Read also: Gautam Adani in initial talks with firms, investors to raise $10 billion for expansion