Rain boosts Indian reservoirs, too late for farms

India's late monsoon revival boosted depleted hydropower and irrigation reservoirs and helped the soybean crop, but the overall farm outlook remained gloomy after three months of patchy rains and food prices are soaring.

Monsoon rains made a shaky start this year with the driest June in 83 years and unusually low rain in early August, making the seasonal rainfall 23 percent below average so far, which is the worst since 1972.

Last week's normal rains helped water levels in India's main reservoirs fill up to 45 percent of capacity, rising three percentage points in a week, which is the normal rate for the period.

But because of past dry spells, the water level was still short of the normal 60 percent of capacity, which would hurt winter irrigation and hydropower generation that accounts for a quarter of India's generation capacity of 150,000 megawatts.