Indian farmers have been moving away from rapeseed planting, despite higher prices for the crop, due to above-average temperatures impacting the crop, Economic Times reported from a Reuters story quoting industry officials.
Farmers had been switching to crops less affected by heat, such as wheat and potatoes, which could lead to a 10% drop in rapeseed planted area, the 25 November report said.
Against a backdrop of lower domestic production, India – the world’s leading vegetable oil importer – may need to import more cooking oils such as palm, soyabean and sunflower to meet rising demand, according to the report.
Temperatures were higher than usual in October and in the first three weeks of November, which had affected the rapeseed crop, Anil Chatar, a leading trader based in Jaipur, Rajasthan, the biggest rapeseed producing state in India, was quoted as saying.
“In many places, the early-planted crops didn’t germinate, so farmers ended up switching to different ones,” Chatar said.
According to weather department data, the maximum temperature in key producing districts in Rajasthan had been 2-7°C above normal in the weeks prior to the report.
As of 21 November, rapeseed was planted on 3.12M ha of land in Rajasthan, down 7.2% from the previous year, government data showed.
Higher temperatures had also affected planting in neighbouring states such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Haryana, Chatar said.
The industry had been expecting a larger rapeseed planted area after New Delhi increased the minimum support price by 5.3% to INR 5,950 (US$70.61)/100kg, the report said.
However, farmers were concerned about pricing as soyabean had been selling at a lower level than the government-set floor price, Chatar added.
Rapeseed also competes with wheat and chickpea, prices of which had jumped at the time of the report, spurring farmers to switch to those crops and cutting the area devoted to rapeseed, Krishna Khandelwal, a trader based at Niwai, Rajasthan, was quoted as saying.
India meets nearly a third of its cooking oil demand through imports of palm oil, soyabean oil and sunflower oil from Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, Argentina, Ukraine and Russia, according to the trade ministry.