India, Again

"India - Late rains to pare damage to most summer crops" is one headline on the wires this morning. Better rains in the second half of August mean that crop losses won't be as bad as first thought, spins the Indian Agriculture Secretary.

Rains to Aug 31st are now 'only' 23% below normal he proudly boasts, adding that this will moderate crop losses this year.

He skips over the fact that this would still be the worst monsoon season since rains were 24% below normal in 1972.

He also neatly dodges the fact that any amount of rain won't help crops that haven't been planted at all. Only 3.4 million hectares of summer rice has been sown in the worst affected state of Uttar Pradesh, last year it was 6 million.

Sugar cane and soybean plantings are also sharply lower.

The government have announced that they will release one million tonnes of wheat from state-owned reserves onto the domestic market "to give relief to consumers battling with rising prices of food grains" within days.

They promised to release three million tonnes a couple of weeks ago, but nothing ever happened. One million tonnes represents approximately five days of national usage.