India downgrades monsoon forecast

India on Tuesday cut this year’s monsoon forecast to 88 percent of the long-term average, prompted by an El Nino weather pattern and raising fears of the first drought in six years in a country where nearly half of farmland lacks irrigation.

If it happens, the drought would mark a second blow for the country’s crops, which suffered from excess rain at harvest this year.

This year’s harvest problems are expected to generate good pulse crop imports but there are large government owned stocks of wheat to draw on. But if a poor monsoon results in a second poor crop then India might have to turn to the international market.

Although agriculture accounts for just about 15 percent of a $2 trillion economy, three-fifths of India’s population of more than 1.2 billion depend on farming for their livelihood.

The arrival of the June-September rains has already been delayed about five days, worrying both farmers and prime minister Narendra Modi’s government, which is battling a rural slowdown.

In 2009, El Nino, or a warming of sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific, contributed to India’s worst drought in four decades, and drove steep rises in global prices for commodities like sugar.

“Let’s pray to God that the revised forecast does not come true,” said Harsh Vardhan, minister for earth sciences.

Modi has already asked ministers to prepare contingency plans to deal with a below-par monsoon, the minister added.

In April, India forecast monsoon rains at 93 percent of the average. Rainfall of less than 90 percent is considered to result in a drought year, although the latest prediction has an error margin of four percentage points either way.