The area under India’s kharif crops in the ongoing season reached 1,086.31 lakh hectares (lh) as of September 4, compared with 1,104.01 lh in the year-ago period, the Agriculture Ministry said in its weekly update on Monday. The current year’s progressive area is still 2 per cent less than the season’s normal acreage of 1104.46 lh.
“After the country received 86 per cent of its average rainfall during June-August, the monsoon rainfall from September 1 to 7 has been 82 per cent of its long-period average (LPA). Major rainfall-deficit states in September include Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, and Maharashtra.”
The government has fixed a production target of 176.16 million tonne (mt) of foodgrains for kharif 2026. It includes 123.15 mt of rice, 8.41 mt of pulses, 31.04 mt of maize, and 13.56 mt of nutri-cereals. Among other categories, the output target has been set at 28.93 mt for oilseeds, 500 mt for sugarcane and 33.6 million bales for cotton (each bale weighs 170 kh).
