The torrential rain affected sowing in Gujarat

30% of sown cotton, groundnut, Sesame damage

Groundnut prices not to witness immediate impact of Rain. The torrential rain in the state has hurts sowing and has resulted in damage of 30% of the cotton and ground nut crop where sowing had been complete. Sowing this season had progressed faster than last year and was about 23% for land was shown at the same point last year.

Around 25% of land sown with cotton is affected. Banasakntha Districts, Rajkot District, Morbi District and Amreli district have seen some part of sown filed washed out by the heavy rains. Whether these fields are re-sown remains to be seen, said by Cotton Traders in the region. According to Traders, cotton prices showed a down ward trend one week ago as sowing had picked up pace. Reports of Crop damage led to prices moving up all belt marginally.

Cotton prices inched up by US$15 from US$655 to US$670 per candy he added.

Groundnut sowing will be adverse fully affected by the heavy rains of the past few days. Junagadh district, Rajkot district and Jamnagar district are major Groundnut growing area in the Gujarat State. Although, Groundnut sowing in Junagadh district, Rajkot district, Amreli district and Jamanagar district are expected to be adversely affected. The exact scale will only be revealed after the water recedes. -“Said by the Traders in the region.

Market yards (Mandis) official and traders said that there has been no immediate impact on prices of Groundnut as several market yards in these area show no arrival of groundnuts due to heavy rains.

The office bearers of a market yard in Banaskantha district said that actual damage would be clear only once the water recedes, but in several areas entire filed have been washed away and will not be worth sowing again, as the top soil has been fully washed away.

According to officials in Banaskantha district Region, Amreli district and Rajkot district, sowing of both ground nut and cotton has been affected, while in the Surendranagar district only cotton has been affected.

With Gujarat Heavy Already received 64% of its average annual rainfall sowing this year has been completed on 23% more acreage than last year at the same point of time. The area sown with ground nut and cotton area at 114% and 9% of their three years average area sown for the entire season respectively.

According to data released by the state government, sowing has been complete on around 81.83% of the three years average area sown, which is 8.576 million hectares (HA) by July 25, 0.718 million HA had been sown by the same date. Official said that with good raining relatively early this year, the area currently sown is 1.317 million HA more than at the same point of time last year.

Interestingly, cotton has gained ground this year. The fiber crop has already been sown on 2.584 million HA which is more than the total area sown with it in 2016. In 2016, by July 18, only 2.038 million HA was sown by the end of the season in October.

Apart from cotton and ground nuts Sesame Seeds and Guar are other crops sown that will be affected by the torrential rains. Sesame growing has been affected. Sesame crop will takes 90 to 120 days to from sowing to harvesting.  Due to early rain, farmers has sown Sesame Seeds also in their fields but due to erratic rain all is affected some places has affected a lot. Almost 40% affected sowing. As stated in earlier paragraph that this year rain is early and sowing has started early time.  if in next couple of week if there will be clear weather and sunlight then farmers will again re-sowing will take places and there will be recovery and there will not be much effect on total over all crop position as the sowing is more than last year. (Source: local News Paper)

Agri commodities stored in yards, hits stockist:

Traders and farmers are reeling after agriculture commodities, including castor, mustard, spices and cereals stored in warehouses and on the premises of Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMC) in North Gujarat were damaged in floodwaters, thereby damaging the stored produce.

After the heavy rainfall over the weekend, the marketyards in Palanpur and Dhanera remained submerged in 5-7 feet of flood water.