India: Monsoon rains likely to be better in rice-growing states

India’s monsoon rain, which provides four-fifths of the country’s annual rainfall, may progress in the main rice-growing areas, helping farmers boost output. Rains will increase in the next three days in the states of Bihar and West Bengal, the biggest growers of the cereal. “There will be good rains over the eastern and peninsular region in the next three days,” BP Yadav, director at New Delhi-based India Meteorological Department, said on Monday.

The monsoon may cross into Maharashtra, one of the biggest sugar cane and cotton-growing state, over the next three days. The weather system that induced an early onset over Kerala stalled over the western coast since May 29 after being disrupted by super cyclone Gonu.

“Conditions are favourable for further advance of monsoon into some parts of Konkan and Goa, south-central Maharashtra and interior peninsula during the next 3 days,’’ the weather bureau said in a statement on its website. The timing of the monsoon season is crucial for India’s 234 million farmers and their crops of rice, soybeans, peanuts and lentils.

Farm output accounts for about a fifth of the country’s $854 billion economy. The season runs from June 1 to September 30. Rains in the four-month rainy season will be 95% of the average reported between 1941 and 1990, a level considered normal, the weather office said on April 19.