India's area under rice, oilseeds and cotton rise

The total area under rice in the country has exceeded 26 million hectares while the acreage under oilseeds and cotton have gone up by 4.86 lakh ha and 5.56 lakh ha, respectively, during the current crop season.

As per data received from states, rice has been sown in 26.036 million hectares, an increase of 1.557 million hectares over last year's acreage as of date date.

Higher acreage of rice has been reported from Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, West Bengal and Assam. 

Oilseeds have been sown in 15.792 million hectares, up 4.86 lakh hectares compared to last year's sown area.

The area sown by coarse cereals has also been higher at 16.338 million hectares. Higher area coverage has been reported from Madhya Pradesh and Uttrakhand.

Cotton acreage has increased to 10.992 million hectares as against 10.436 million hectares last year.

As of 5 August 2011, the area under pulses stood at 8.1 million hectares and that under sugarcane at 5.113 million hectares while jute+mesta (raw jute) crop covered 8.94 lakh hectares, an official release said today.
 
Meanwhile, the government has raised the minimum support price (MSP) of common variety of paddy for 2011-12 by Rs80 per quintal as per the recommendations of the Commission for Agricultural Costs & Prices (CACP). In addition, CACP has recommended that if exports remain banned and levy is not reduced, the government should give a bonus of Rs80 per quintal on top of the recommended MSP.

The MSP for common variety of paddy for 2011-12, at Rs1,080 per quintal, provides adequate margin over the CACP's projected all-India weighted average cost of production of Rs888 per quintal, minister of state for agriculture and food processing industries Harish Rawat informed the Rajya Sabha in a written reply.