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Barring soybean, area under major oilseeds declines by Dilip Kumar Jha

Despite a recovery, acreage of groundnut, sunflower and castorseed recorded a sharp decline this year due to low rainfall in major producing areas during the peak sowing season. The three major kharif oilseeds are sown for a month starting June 15 and harvested between October and December.

Data collated by the ministry of agriculture showed the area under groundnut declined 28.37 per cent as on July 21. The sowing area under sunflower and castorseed plunged 41.6 per cent and 22.2 per cent respectively. The decline in area is expected to lower the output of oilseeds and vegetable oil thereafter resulting into a possible price increase.

"The rainfall intensified in the last week, thereby, forcing farmers to bring more and more under the kharif oilseed crops. We feel the area will increase in the coming days," said Satyanarayan Agarwal, president of the apex trade body Central Organisation for Oil Industry & Trade (COOIT).

Shrinking

Acreage area under kharif oilseeds (in million hectares, as on July 21, 2011)

Crop        2010     2011
Groundnut   3.78     2.71
Soybean     8.09     9.12
Sunflower   0.16     0.09
Nigerseed   0.06     0.03
Castor      0.23     0.18

In the week ended July 14, however, sowing area under the three major oilseed crops (groundnut, sunflower and castorseed) was lower by over 50 per cent. Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan are the leading producers of edible oilseeds in India.

Rainfall has been deficient across all major growing regions especially during the later half of June. Monsoon rainfall has improved recently in central India thereby accelerating the delayed sowing of soybean in Maharashtra. Soybean planting is nearing completion in Madhya Pradesh.

During last week, Gujarat received the much-needed above normal rainfall thereby easing the dry spell. Unfortunately, however, the planting period for groundnut seed has lapsed forcing the farmers to switch to cotton and other crops.

Traders hope the revival in monsoon will increase the sowing activity enabling the farmers to reach the oilseed area as that of last year.

Even if farmers intensify sowing for the extended kharif period, the overall area under oilseeds this year will remain subdued at least by 10 per cent. Especially in Gujarat where oilseeds are major crops, 10 per cent deficit in sowing area will result into crop diversion of 100,000 hectares, said B V Mehta, executive director of the Solvent Extractors' Association (SEA).

In the fourth advanced estimated, the ministry of agriculture has estimated 25 per cent rise in overall oilseed output from 24.9 million tonnes to 31.1 million tonnes which will be supplemented largely by 12.66 per cent increase in area under soybean. This means, India will have 2.2 million tonnes of additional vegetable oil this year. Accordingly, vegetable oil imports should come down to below 8 million tonnes which looks impossible, said Mehta.

In case edible oil producers want to keep their selling price under control, they will have to increase blending of palm oil with others including soybean, sunflower and castor oil.

"Substitutes are always available and hence, consumers need not worry. Oilseed crop in Ukraine has been good. Hence, we will import from Ukraine in addition to existing suppliers like Indonesia, Malaysia and Argentina," said Agarwal.

With the estimated increase in cotton production, processing of cotton oilseed will bridge the deficit of other vegetable oil for blending with sunflower, castor and groundnut, he added.