Kharif sowing improved drastically with the increase of monsoon rainfall since last week. The sowing shortfall is down to 8.61 percent, covering 413.34 lakh hectares (LH), compared to 452.3 LH covered in the corresponding week of last year. Improvement in rainfall helped the farmers in speed up the sowing  The overall rainfall deficit is coming down from 28 percent to 14 percent this week.  So far, only 30 percent of districts in the country received normal rainfall when 42 percent of them are in deficient and 11 percent are in acutely deficient condition.