NEW DELHI: The Centre aims to raise planting of winter-sown crops and improve irrigation to make up for the damage to farms and to try to counter rising food prices after poor monsoon rains hurt crops such as rice and sugarcane. Monsoon rains have been 29% below average this year, raising prospects of bigger sugar imports as well as triggering a sharp rise in food prices and hitting rural incomes. “Every effort has to be taken to contain and moderate this price increase,” food and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar told a conference of chief ministers in the Capital on Monday.

The minister said farmers across the country had suffered after rains were far short of what the weather office predicted. “Deficit Southwest monsoon has adversely affected the agriculture operations in the (summer) season all over the country,” he said, adding “To salvage the losses... we need to plan for higher crop coverage in the (winter) season.”

Mr Pawar said the government needed to closely monitor water levels at the main reservoirs, ensure efficient use of water for irrigation, and help farmers gain better access to funds, fertilisers and seeds for the winter crop.

Rainfall has improved since last week but sowing of many crops has already suffered, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, the top cane-producing state, which was drier than the rest of the country.

Madhya Pradesh, a key soyabean region, received up to four times the normal rainfall in the middle of last week. Traders had feared productivity might drop up to 7% if rains were delayed further. Soyabean, the main summer-sown oilseed crop, had been deprived of rains for about three weeks from late July.

LS Rathore, head of Agromet Division of the India Meteorological Department, said the heavy showers over cane-and-soyabean-growing belts had brightened crop prospects”.