Ravinder Kumar, a wheat farmer from Sidpur village of Karnal district, Haryana, says his crop yield has dropped to 17-18 quintal per acre in the current season compared with 24-25 quintal last year. Heatwaves in the second half of March with temperatures rising to 40 degrees Celsius hit the crop at the ripening stage, he says. “The bulk of the grains are shrivelled or shrunken,” Kumar said, adding that his income from this year’s wheat crop would be just Rs 34,000 per acre, while he could have got Rs 48,000 per acre if the yield was good.
Farmers like Kumar could have an average net income of just around Rs 15,000 per acre this year, after taking into consideration costs of seed, inputs like fertilisers and pesticides, labour and other costs.
Just around 200 km away in Rajpura mandi, one of the biggest in Punjab, Gurcharan Singh, a farmer at Bal Suan village, part of Patiala district, who had sown wheat in 11 acres, says his per acre yield has dropped to around 17 quintal this year, from 21 quintal he got in 2021.
Scientists say that day temperatures should ideally be in the early 30 degrees Celsius when the kernel accumulates starch and nutrients.
“There would be a 10-15% drop in yield of wheat crops, especially in Punjab and Haryana because of excessive wheat during March,” said Ajay Vir Jhakar, chairman, Bharat Krishak Samaj.
According to a Rajpura mandi official, extreme heat in March and early April has increased the share of shrivelled grain in the crop from the usual level of around 5% to 10-20% in the state. Farmers are bringing in shrivelled grains beyond the Food Corporation of India (FCI) prescribed maximum permissible limit of 6%.
The government is considering a proposal to relax norms for shrivelled grain soon. It is yet to officially ascertain the extent of yield losses in the case of wheat while in the second advance estimates of food grain production released in February, the government had estimated wheat production of 111 million tonne (MT) in 2021-22, compared with 109 MT in the previous year. At the National Kharif Conference held last week, agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar, however, ruled out any drop in wheat production this year. But going by the feed-backs from key mandis, the production could be at least 10% lower than the estimate.
In Uttar Pradesh, the biggest producer of wheat in the country, sowing was carried out on 9.77 million hectare (MH) this year, marginally less than last year. The production is unlikely to be disrupted this year as farmers provided adequate irrigation to the crop during the rising temperature in March.
Madhya Pradesh government officials said that wheat production is unlikely to be impacted because of the heatwave, but because of the state government’s thrust on exports, government procurement has been sluggish.
Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh contributed 76% to the country’s wheat production in 2019-20.
In terms of production of wheat, Punjab and Haryana had a share of 16% and 11% respectively in the country’s production of 107 MT of grain in the 2019-20 crop year (July-June). The two states had a share of 32% and 19% respectively in the wheat marketing year 2020-21.
The third advance estimate of wheat production is expected next month, it is to be seen whether the government would revise the estimates of wheat production downward.
However, GP Singh, director at Karnal based Indian Institute of Wheat and Barley Research, believes that while the moisture content in the wheat crop has been in the range of 8% to 9% against the usual moisture content of around 10% to 11%, because of higher acreage this session, the production loss would be marginal.
Singh said that because of the higher acreage of wheat in the 2021-22 crop year at 33.64 MH against 31.61 MH of sowing in the previous year, production is likely to surpass 111 MT this year.
