India’s monsoon rains may improve next month but are still set to be the worst in four decades, and the associated slow filling of reservoirs is putting winter crops and power supplies at risk.

Monsoon rains, the lifeline for farms that support more that half of India’s 1.1 billion people, have been patchy this year and about 40 percent of India’s districts are drought-hit.

The head of the weather office, Ajay Tyagi, said September rainfall would improve, but the four-month season since June would still be about 20 percent below normal.

That would make it the worst since 1972 when there was also a severe El Nino phenomenon, in which changes in sea temperature in the Pacific Ocean affects weather.

Low rains have ravaged India’s rice crop and hit soybean, cane and groundnut, and disrupted the flow of water into the main reservoirs that are vital for hydropower generation and winter irrigation.

Water levels in India’s main reservoirs rose to 42 percent of capacity on Aug. 27, government data showed, rising 3 percentage points in a week. The rise, smaller than a 10-year average of a rise of 5 percentage points for the week.

“Water storage in reservoirs is a very good regionalised and robust indicator of realistic rainfall in the vast catchment. It is a much better and practical parameter as compared to point estimate measured by rain-gauges,” the farm ministry says.

Reservoirs are important for hydropower, which accounts for a quarter of India’s generation capacity of about 150,000 megawatts. They also provide water to irrigate winter crops.

CROP DAMAGE

A 19 percent rain deficit in 2002 reduced India’s summer-sown harvest by 22 percent and the output of winter-sown crops by 13 percent.

This year, the cane crop in India’s top producing state of Uttar Pradesh is expected to shrink about 16 percent because of drought in most parts of the region, raising prospects of large raw sugar imports by the world’s top consumer of the sweetener.

Farm Minister Sharad Pawar said the sugar industry had agreed to provide more sugar at lower prices during the festival season in the next two months to rein in prices. [ID:nBMB008422]

India’s soybean output may drop as much as 19 percent in the new season because of failed monsoon rains, reducing soymeal export deals to a trickle, traders and industry officials said on Friday.

“We expect about 8-9 million tonnes output,” said Sandeep Bajoria, chief executive of Mumbai-based trading firm Sunvin Group and past head of many trade bodies including the Central Organisation for Oil Industry and Trade.

That amounts to a fall of 9 to 19 percent from last year’s production of 9.6 tonnes, and compares with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s estimate of 10 million tonnes earlier this month.

Traders said India’s soymeal sales had slowed down because of doubts over the harvest.

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