Despite the decrease in maize production, the production of coarse grains improved

27-Sep-2024 08:50 PM

New Delhi. Last year, there was less rainfall during the southwest monsoon season and especially in August 2023, drought-like conditions prevailed in some important agricultural producing states of the country.

This caused some damage to the Kharif crops. However, due to better production of Rabi season, Kharif was still compensated to a great extent.

According to the final estimate of the Union Agriculture Ministry, during the 2023-24 season, although the domestic production of maize fell by 4.20 lakh tonnes from 330.85 lakh tonnes to 376.65 lakh tonnes as compared to the 2022-23 season,

despite this, the total production of coarse grains increased by 23.17 lakh tonnes from 573.19 lakh tonnes to 596.36 lakh tonnes.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, in the marketing season of 2023-24, 107.16 lakh tonnes of millet, 47.37 lakh tonnes of sorghum,

16.99 lakh tonnes of barley, 16.70 lakh tonnes of ragi and 4.49 lakh tonnes of small millets were produced.

The total contribution of Shri Anna in the category of coarse grains was recorded at 175.72 lakh tonnes.

Coarse grains are cultivated in many provinces of the country, which mainly include Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Bihar and Haryana etc. Most of these states had a drought-like situation last year.

In the current Kharif season, the production area of ​​coarse grains at the all-India level has increased to 192.55 lakh hectares, which is 6.48 lakh hectares more than last year's sowing area of ​​186.07 lakh hectares.

Under this, especially the area under maize jumped from 84.65 lakh hectare to 88.06 lakh hectare,

area under sorghum increased from 14.29 lakh hectare to 16.13 lakh hectare and sowing area of ​​Ragi improved from 10.50 lakh hectare to 12.46 lakh hectare but the production area of ​​millet fell from 70.94 lakh hectare to 69.91 lakh hectare.