Rains returned to India’s main soybean- growing areas, ending a three-week long dry spell that threatened to shrivel the nation’s biggest oilseed crop.
Some soybean fields in Madhya Pradesh, which produces more than 50 per cent of the nation’s crop, got more than 100 millimeters (3.9 inches) of rain over the weekend, according to the India Meteorological Department.
The showers were timely for the crop as it eased the moisture stress, said Davish Jain, chairman of the Soybean Processors Association of India, said on Monday.
The revival of rain should also augur well for rice, cotton and other rain-fed crops and help Prime Minister Narendra Modi contain food prices in Asia’s third-largest economy. A bigger oilseed harvest may cut reliance on imports of palm and soybean oils. The first back-to-back monsoon shortfall in three decades is still possible as the first El Nino since 2010 strengthens, according to India’s weather bureau.
“This rain has come as a shower of nectar for soybeans,” said Dilip Singh Tomar, who grows soybeans in his 25-acre farm at Moradhat in Madhya Pradesh. “The crop has got a rebirth. There could have been a disaster had the rains been delayed by five to six days. Thank God, we are saved,” he said.
News by Bloomberg, edited by ESM
