May 9, 2012

India eyes to produce 100 million tonnes wheat by 2020

From the record 90 million tonnes expected this crop year ending June 30, India has advanced a plan to raise wheat output to 100 million tonnes by 2020.

"It can be achieved easily," Indu Sharma, director of the state-run Directorate of Wheat Research, told Dow Jones Newswires Tuesday (May 8).

The government had earlier aimed to achieve that output level by 2030. Higher output will be a key to the success of the government's planned food security programme, to be implemented in a year, as it would expand the scope of subsidised sales by guaranteeing cheap food grains to the poor, malnourished and other weaker sections.

Sharma said the government will seek to widen the irrigation network in the country's central and north eastern regions, where wheat productivity is relatively low compared with the bread basket region in the north. It will also start a seed replacement programme to introduce hardier and higher-yielding varieties, she said.

India's wheat crop is vulnerable to any sharp rise in temperature--called terminal heat--especially just before harvest.

"Even a rise of one degree Celsius can bring down the grain's output by three to four million tonnes," Sharma said.

Wheat is sown in October and November and harvest starts by end-March or the first week of April. The government also plans to reduce the time gap between sowing of wheat and harvest of the previous season's crop, mostly rice, by introducing more mechanised harvesting, which reduces the load on soil nutrients and improves soil health. Rice is the main summer-sown grain crop and wheat is usually planted over the same area in winter.

India's total wheat acreage was an estimated 29 million hectares in 2011-12, but mechanised harvesting was practised only on about three million hectares. The government aims to gradually expand this to over 10 million hectares, Sharma said.

Such practices would be critical to raising output amid declining soil fertility as well as falling water tables in Punjab and Haryana states, the top producers, she added.