Reuters India's wheat plantings remained steady despite a rally in price of the staple to a record as farmers in a key producing central state shifted to rapeseed (mustard) to take advantage of even higher prices for the oilseed, farm ministry data showed on Monday. A lower-than-expected planting area in the world's second biggest wheat producer may cap an expected rise in production, after output fell last year because of a heatwave...

-Financial Express Higher sowing augurs well for bountiful wheat and oilseed production The resilience of India’s agricultural sector has been a positive factor in the India growth story. During the ongoing rabi season, the average area sown for wheat is up by 25%, to 25.5 million hectares as of December 9, from a year earlier. Area under oilseeds, too, is at record levels. All of this augurs well for bumper rabi crops...

-The Hindu Business Line Acreage under oilseeds, paddy and other rabi crops gains Wheat acreage in Uttar Pradesh, the country’s largest producer of winter-grown cereal, has jumped 36 per cent to 75.91 lakh hectares (lh) as of Friday from 55.82 lh a year ago. This has, in turn, resulted in the country’s overall sowing of all crops registering a 15 per cent growth in the ongoing rabi season so far. As of December...

There is some respite expected for India in terms of prices of imported commodities. This may ease the depletion of its foreign exchange reserves. The country has faced a widening of its merchandise trade deficit from US$ -17.91 billion to US$ -26.91 billion between October 2021 and October 2022. The commodity price data provided by the World Bank in December 2022 (termed as The Pink Sheet) shows that energy prices plummeted by...

-Financial Express Last year till mid-December, farmers were aware of future prices on commodity burse platforms such as National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX). Two months after harvesting the kharif soyabean crop, Narayan Singh, a farmer from Nipaniya Baijnath village of Malwa region in Madhya Pradesh, is still holding on to a chunk of the produce in anticipation of higher prices. In this kharif season, Singh harvested nearly 55 quintals of soyabean crop...