June 29, 2012

Favourable weather boosts India's 2012 wheat crop harvest

The favourable weather and government supports will cause India to harvest a record crop this year, the United Nations said.

The country's farmers may reap 90.23 million tonnes of wheat in 2012, up from last year's 86.87 million tonnes, the UN's Rome-based Food & Agriculture Organisation said in a report on its website Thursday (June 28).

Planting of mainly rice and coarse grains during the monsoon season is off to a slow start because of a scarcity of rain, the FAO said. A favourable monsoon last year boosted last year's cereal production to a record 232.1 million tonnes including milled rice, up 5.5% from a year earlier, it said.

India will have a surplus of about 13 million tonnes available to export in the 2012-13 season that started in April, nearly double the five-year average, the FAO said. That includes wheat, corn and rice.

"With high government procurement, lack of sufficient quality storage capacity is a primary concern," it said.