Rain brings hope to some farmers, despair to others

Continuing rainfall in Telangana damages standing kharif crops in harvesting stage

October 18, 2017 02:58 am | Updated 02:58 am IST - B. Chandrashekhar

Even as rain across Telangana and adjoining areas of neighbouring States continues to bring flood into major reservoirs to cheer up one section of farmers with improved prospects on Rabi cultivation, another section that raised Kharif crops is at the receiving end with their standing crops getting either damaged or the yields getting affected.

Crops such as soy bean, maize, paddy and cotton that are in the harvesting stage are getting damaged due to rain and in turn affecting the chances of farmer getting the support price. The hopes of the farming community about having a good beginning to the harvesting season were dented initially itself as the long dry spells resulted in the poor yields of green gram and black gram crops.

In spite of the State government’s efforts to get procurement centres for the two pulses opened early, the farming community did not get benefited since most of the produce did not conform to the quality norms fixed by National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation (NAFED). As a result, getting minimum support price for the two crops remained a mirage with the agency procuring very little quantity of the two.

“The NAFED could procure only about 7,000 quintals of green gram and 4,000 quintals of black gram as the quality of the produce has been poor and disposal of the stocks by farmers even before the opening of procurement centres,” official sources said. The MSP of ₹ 5,575 per quintal and ₹ 5,400 per quintal, respectively, remained a distant dream as the private traders paid a maximum of only ₹ 4,000 per quintal for the two crops.

Similar has been the fate of soy bean and maize farmers with the rains affecting the very harvesting itself and the damaged produce kept the MSP of ₹ 3,050 per quintal and ₹ 1,425 per quintal, respectively, at bay again due to poor quality. However, more worrying is the damage caused to initial cotton pickings, which would generally have high quality.

“Although some procurement centres were opened by the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) on Monday, the chances of getting cotton produce with the required quality qualifying for the MSP of ₹4,320 per quintal are remote for the initial pickings,” sources in the Agriculture Department said adding that rain could ultimately affect 25 % of cotton production.

Officials stated that even CCI was expecting arrivals of quality cotton from the first week of November.

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