New Delhi, (Asian independent) Days into the Rabi season, the sowing area under wheat is nearly eight lakh hectares (ha) more compared to the same time in 2020, while the total sowing area is 260 lakh ha compared to 239.33 lakh ha same time in 2020, data from the Union Agriculture Ministry said.
The area sown for wheat is 88.46 lakh ha compared to 80.71 lakh ha; for rice it is 6.33 lakh ha in 2021 as compared to 42.51 lakh in 2020, while that under pulses is 76.12 lakh ha, almost comparable to 76.19 lakh ha in 2020.
Area sown for coarse-cum-nutri crops is 20.48 lakh ha, slightly less compared to 22.08 lakh ha in 2020 while that for oil seeds in 2021 is 69.26 lakh ha compared to 53.28 lakh ha in 2020.
Among the oilseeds, the area sown for rapeseed and mustard is 65.21 lakh ha compared to just 49.98 lakh ha in 2020 and even more than 61.55 lakh ha of normal sowing area, according to the Department of Economics and Statistics (DES) data.
In case of wheat, higher area is reported from the states of Madhya Pradesh (7.15 lakh ha), Rajasthan (4.30 lakh ha), Uttar Pradesh (2.83 lakh ha), Jammu & Kashmir (0.41 lakh ha), Himachal Pradesh (0.20 lakh ha) and Karnataka (0.01 lakh ha) while less area is reported from the states of Punjab (3.62 lakh ha), Haryana (1.40 lakh ha), Gujarat (0.97 lakh ha), Maharashtra (0.38 lakh ha), Uttarakhand (0.31 lakh ha), Chhattisgarh (0.27 lakh ha), Bihar (0.13 lakh ha) and Jharkhand (0.07 lakh ha).
For rice, less area is reported from the states of Andhra Pradesh (0.31 lakh ha), Tamil Nadu (0.26 lakh ha), Kerala (0.18 lakh ha) and Karnataka (0.02 lakh ha). Rice is a major kharif crop and only few states go for rice in rabi season.
The Ministry’s statistics also showed that coarse-cum-nutri cereals was sown in higher area in Karnataka (0.49 lakh ha), Rajasthan (0.40 lakh ha), Telangana (0.28 lakh ha), Tamil Nadu (0.03 lakh ha) and Uttar Pradesh (0.02 lakh ha) while it was sown in lesser area in Maharashtra (2.28 lakh ha), Bihar (0.23 lakh ha), Andhra Pradesh (0.10 lakh ha), Chhattisgarh (0.08 lakh ha), Haryana (0.05 lakh ha), West Bengal (0.03 lakh ha), Gujarat (0.01 lakh ha), Uttarakhand (0.01 lakh ha), Assam (0.01 lakh ha) and Odisha (0.01 lakh ha).
The oilseeds were sown in higher area in the states of Rajasthan (9.79 lakh ha), Madhya Pradesh (3.76 lakh ha), Haryana (1.26 lakh ha), Telangana (0.76 lakh ha), Assam (0.54 lakh ha), Gujarat (0.41 lakh ha), Karnataka (0.25 lakh ha), Jammu & Kashmir (0.03 lakh ha), Meghalaya (0.01 lakh ha) and Uttarakhand (0.01 lakh ha) and over less area in Chhattisgarh (0.19 lakh ha), Nagaland (0.11 lakh ha), Odisha (0.11 lakh ha), Bihar (0.11 lakh ha), Uttar Pradesh (0.10 lakh ha), Jharkhand (0.10 lakh ha), Tamil Nadu (0.07 lakh ha), West Bengal (0.04 lakh ha) and Maharashtra (0.03 lakh ha), the data showed.
