Wheat crop robust, but likely early summer sounds alarm

NEW DELHI: Wheat growers are worried about a repeat of last year’s disastrous early summer that shriveled crops, with temperatures rising steadily over northwestern plains, prompting top agricultural bodies to caution farmers.

So far, all signs point to a surplus harvest, a wheat scientist said. While cool weather due to an approaching weak western disturbance, which refers to a rainbearing system, is likely to provide a minor breather this week, temperatures will mostly be warmer, according to a latest forecast by the India Meteorological Department.

In March 2022, the hottest March ever recorded roiled wheat crops around harvest time, leading to a 2.5% fall in wheat output to 106 million tonnes, even as exports kept rising due to dwindling supplies from the Russia-Ukraine region.

Two months later, the government, alarmed at increasing shipments amid high global demand, put a ban on wheat exports. The government’s own purchases plunged as it scraped the bottom of its own silos to meet statutory obligations of distributing subsidised grains to nearly 800 million beneficiaries. The government’s cheap-food scheme did not suffer because of previously-held stocks and a strategy to replace wheat with rice in some states.

Despite the ban, wheat inflation has remained elevated, with cereals prices growing 16.1% in January 2023 year-on-year against 13.8% in December 2022. “The current condition of the wheat crop is excellent and we expect a record 112 million tonnes of output. In case temperatures go very high, over which nobody has control, we have alerted farmers to go for crop-protection measures,” Gyanendra Singh, director of Indian Institute of Wheat and Barley Research, Karnal, said, adding that about 65% of the wheat area have been sown with varieties that have a higher tolerance to heat.

While IIWBR’s published advisory asked wheat farmers to keep fields irrigated and watch out for pestilence, the Indian Agricultural Research Institute issued a starker warning for wheat growers valid till February 19, especially in the national capital region.

“The only reason behind these heatwaves is global warming,” said Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune.