El Nino to cripple farm activity this year too?

New Delhi: With the top Met agencies predicting that the El Nino effect, the warm phase of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (commonly called ENSO) which is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific, will impact the monsoon season in India this year too (2016), a grim future awaits the country.

For the past two years, the dip in farm production and the subsequent price rice hitting the consumers has already had a devastating effect on the household finances, apart from witnessing unprecedented suicides.

The Met officials have already predicted that this July/August period would be a dry period in almost all over India due to the climate changes under the intense El Nino effect. The winter this season has been a warmer one with temperatures remaining four to five degrees above the means.

The year gone by, 2015, has been a challenging one for the agriculture sector. This, in fact, has been the second consecutive year of hardships for farmers owing to drought and inclement weather in several parts of the country.

The poor show would continue this year too is evident from the fact that currently rabi sowing of wheat is lower by 20.23 lakh hectares than last year. Southwest monsoon was 14 per cent below normal of the Long Period Average in 2015 on the back of 12 per cent deficiency in the previous year affecting the kharif crop.

The northeast monsoon too played havoc in Tamil Nadu and adjoining region with unprecedented floods wiping out entire paddy and cash crops. This year again, the officials in the Agriculture Department express concern not only on the output of pulses and oil seeds, but also that of cereals.

They point out that although the country is surplus in food grains as of now, with a legal commitment to provide at least 62.5 million tonnes of subsidized foodgrains in the targetted Public Distribution System under the National Food Security Act, unless there is a good season this time around, the country could be staring at a food crisis too.

In nine out of past 15 years, about 100 districts of the country have witnessed a drought like-situation, triggered by failure of south-west monsoon. This frequency is now increasing in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, among a few other states.

Four out of nine droughts in the last 15 years were severe droughts that put the country's food security in jeopardy. This year, the situation is comparatively grim as those states that produce about two-third of country’s foodgrains are severely impacted and may lead to a food crisis.

In 2000 and 2001, 168 and 115 districts were affected by drought respectively, followed by a severe drought in 2002 that impacted 383 districts of the country. Next two years also saw deficient rainfall. In 2003 and 2004, the number of districts affected by drought was 118 and 223, respectively.

At least nine states have declared drought-hit districts this year. These are Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana and Jharkhand. Tamil Nadu, of course, has flood-hit districts. Parts of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra,
Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh had been hit by drought during 2014-15 as well.

Some of the States like Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have gone in for an upward revision of the number of the affected districts. In Uttar Pradesh too, the number had been revised from 30 to 50 districts, officials point out.

Statistics show that the fourth advance estimates of foodgrain production in 2014-15 at 252.68 is 12.36 million tonnes lower than the output of 265.04 million tonnes in 2013-14. This is due to a 6.91 million tonnes decline in the production of wheat. Rice too was slightly lower.

Pulses output went down from 19.24 million tonnes to 17.20 million in tonnes in 2014-15 leading to the crisis of unprecedented price rise in these commodities. Tur prices, for instance, jumped up from Rs. 75 per kilogram a year ago to Rs 199 per kg and are still not under control.

Not just tur and urad, major pulses are selling in the retail market at almost Rs. 140 per kilogram, a Government update shows. The Centre is also aware of the fact that a continued drought season would bring a lot of pressure on it with States seeking huge amounts as drought relief.