Warm winter may cut India's wheat output for second straight year

By Mayank Bhardwaj
NEW DELHI, Jan 13 (Reuters) - India's wheat output is
expected to fall for a second straight year in 2016 after a
series of bumper harvests since 2007 due to an unusually warm
winter in central and northern India.
India, the world's second-biggest wheat producer, will
likely weather the storm as it is sitting on surplus stocks. But
lower wheat output will deepen the crisis in the countryside
where adverse weather conditions have been a bane of late.
Despite last year's lower output, the crisis has remained
confined to farms but any further damage to the crop could start
pinching the public if state stocks get drawn down.
In 2015 untimely hail and rains during harvest cut output to
88.94 million tonnes from 91.50 million tonnes a year earlier.
"We are observing higher than normal temperatures in most
parts of the country, including central and northern India,
where wheat is the main crop," Indu Sharma, chief of state-run
Directorate of Wheat Research, told Reuters by phone from the
northern city of Karnal, a wheat belt.
If higher temperatures are going to imperil the crop yield,
yellow pest infestation has come as a double whammy.
"We've asked farmers to spray fungicide but there are
chances that the pest infestation will spread to more areas in
Punjab, Haryana and Himachal," Sharma said referring to the key
wheat producing states of northern India.
Wheat planting began on a slow note after two successive
droughts. A lag in wheat planting typically leads to lower
yields.
"A lack of moisture in the soil, the absence of spring rains
and higher temperatures couldn't have happened at a worse time.
At the moment we see our production at 87-88 million tonnes,"
said Sharma.
So far the worry was the fall in the area planted with the
crop but dry weather conditions have now come as the second
hurdle, she said.
Provisional estimates suggest farmers have so far planted
wheat on 28.17 million hectares, nearly 6 percent lower than the
previous year.
Farm Ministry officials say wheat acreage is likely to drop
by a million hectares against an average area of 30 million
hectares.
"We'll have to keep our fingers crossed and pray that
temperatures don't go up any further in February and March when
the crop is ready for harvest lest production could fall below
our estimates," Sharma said.
The one redeeming feature is the grain bins brimming with
23.8 million tonnes of wheat against a government target of
13.80 million tonnes.