NEW DELHI: Backed by good monsoon rains and higher acreage, output of Kharif food-grains is estimated at record high of around 165 million tonnes (MT) during 2024-25 crop year, over 5% (9 MT) higher than the previous year. The food-grains’ basket includes all-time high production of paddy at around 120 MT which is higher by over 6% (7 MT) than the output in 2023-24 crop year, according to the agriculture ministry’s estimates released on Tuesday.
The record estimate of paddy, the main Kharif crop, comes amid surplus rice stocks in government godowns that led to slow pace of procurement during the current marketing season. Harvesting of paddy is expected to be completed by mid-Nov across the country.
The ministry, for the first time, used data from the Digital Crop Survey (DCS) which is being conducted under the Digital Agriculture Mission, replacing the manual ‘Girdawari (random estimation based on crop cutting experiments at the time of harvest) system.
Use of digital survey is an important step towards arriving at robust crop area estimates. Such estimation has been done for Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Odisha wherein 100% districts are covered under DCS in Kharif 2024. “This has led to substantial rise in area under paddy particularly in UP,” said the ministry while sharing the first advance estimates of production of Kharif crops for the year 2024-25.
In the Kharif food-grain basket, maize (24 MT) and jowar (2 MT) also showed record output whereas pulses output is expected to remain almost flat at nearly 7 MT.
Among non-foodgrains, oilseeds production is likely to marginally increase to nearly 26 MT while sugarcane production is projected to decline to 440 MT from 453 MT last year. The production of cotton is also estimated to be lower at nearly 30 million bales (170 kg each).