MUMBAI (Commodity Online): India’s agriculture scientists are making a wild guess on the availability of staple foods of India – Wheat and rice.

If they are point blank, it is good news for the agriculture ministry but if it turns out to be just a guess, then India will have to do what is knows the best – despite being an agrarian economy – to import foodgrains.

This Rabi season, they scientists estimate, the rice growing regions will witness more wheat acreage.

Economic Times, India’s leading business daily has quoted Directorate of Wheat Research that area under wheat in 2008-09 in India was 28.5 million hectare with an all time high production of 80.58 million tonne. This is likely to increase by 2 million tonnes due to the drought like situation this kharif season.

Central and southern belts, Indo-Gangetic plain of the Punjab plain, the Haryana plains, and the middle and lower Ganga are the places that is likely to witness Wheat bumper.

India’s food security has always been a roller coaster ride with the world prices of many commodities depending on Indian import scenario. In case of wheat, Australia and US will be the biggest earner while in the case of rice, south eastern Asian nations will be the beneficiary.

But in any case, India, which has bought Gold from IMF to hedge against US Dollar, have no mechanism to hedge against growing impoverishment of its citizens in terms of food security.

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