Cyclone damages Indian crops just before harvest

Heavy rains brought by Cyclone Gulab damaged India’s summer-sown crops such as soya beans, cotton, pulses and vegetables just before harvesting in key growing regions, which could reduce production and lift prices, industry officials said.

Lower production could force India, the world’s biggest importer of edible oils and pulses, to increase overseas purchases of these commodities, and it could reduce cotton exports from the world’s top producer.

Cyclone Gulab, which originated in the Bay of Bengal, made landfall on the east coast on Sunday and then weakened to a deep depression that brought heavy rainfall to the southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and western states of Maharashtra and Gujarat.

“I was hoping for a bumper soya bean crop and good returns since soya bean prices were attractive,” said 35-year old farmer Anand Mane from Latur in Maharashtra. “But just before harvesting, rain hit and destroyed everything,” said Mane, whose soya bean and sugar cane crops on 3.2ha were damaged.

Maharashtra, the country’s second biggest producer of soya beans, cotton and sugar cane and top producer of summer-sown pulses, received 381 per cent more rainfall than usual on Tuesday (Sept 28).

Farmers have expanded areas under soya bean, but rainfall is limiting the rise in production, said Davish Jain, chairman of the Soybean Processors Association of India.

Industry officials were expecting India to produce more than 10 million tonnes of soya bean this year (2021), up from last year’s 8.9 million tonnes.

But the rainfall damage could limit the rise to 9.5 million tonnes, said a dealer with a global trading firm.

Leading cotton producing states have received excessive rainfall in the past four days, which badly affected plucking, said Chirag Patel, chief executive at Jaydeep Cotton Fibers, a leading exporter.

“Within a week, the cotton production outlook changed. We were expecting higher yields, but now yields will go down and even the quality of harvested crop would be inferior at the beginning,” Patel said.