Farmers who sowed rabi crop in nearly 20 lakh hectares are keeping their fingers crossed with the failure of the north east monsoon. With just two months to go for the season to be over, the monsoon seem to have lets them down.
While there was a 40% deficit in rainfall during the first three months of the monsoon (October to December), the crisis deepened with a 98% deficit of rainfall in the winter period (January), according to the Meteorology Department. Farmers began sowing crops in the second week of October and the season will end in the beginning of March.
Crop has been sown in 19.49 lakh hectares till date this season. While paddy is still in the transplantation stage, jowar, bajra and ragi crops are in the vegetative stage, maize crop is in the vegetative to tasseling stage. Red gram, green gram, black gram, horsegram, groundnut and sesamum crops are in the vegetative to flowering stage and Bengal gram crop is in the flowering to pod formation stage.
Paddy has been already sown in 5,44,311 hectares. The area in which the other course grain crops have been sown are jowar 89,305 hectares, bajra 1,906 hectares, maize 1,75,678 hectares and ragi 6,493 hectares. Coarse grains have been sown in a total of 2,76,074 hectares. When it comes to the pulses, black gram has been sown in 3,84,481 hectares, green gram 87,031in hectares, Bengal gram in 5,02,660 hectares. Pulses have been sown in a total of 9,44,350 hectares. Statistically, only half the crop in the State has irrigation facility and the remaining half depends on groundwater and rain for moisture.
Crisis situation
Additional water is required in the next week or fortnight to prevent withering of groundnut in Anantapur, Chittoor, Kadapa, Krishna, Kurnool, Prakasam and West Godavari districts, according to projections of the Andhra Pradesh Water Resources Information and Management Services. With a long wait till July-August for the South West monsoon, the water available in reservoirs also seems to be meagre. There is only 460.06 tmcft, that is 47.84%, in the Godavari, Krishna, Pennar and other river basins.
