India’s farmers have grown summer-sown crops on 103.88 million hectares this year, up 1.3 percent from a year earlier, but yields are likely to be lower due to the country’s first back-to-back drought in three decades. India received 14 percent lower showers than normal in the June-September monsoon season due to the El Nino weather event, which can lead to scorching weather across Asia and heavy rains and floods in South America.
Though agriculture accounts for about 15 percent of the South Asian nation’s $2 trillion economy, three-fifths of its 1.25 billion people depend on the farm sector for their livelihood.
