Continuous rain before and after the sowing of short-duration crops (green gram and black gram) for the kharif season had raised expectations of a good yield this year, but now farmers are worried that the rain spell, for the last one week, during harvesting may damage their crops .
The district received very good rains in the first half of June when sowing was undertaken. However, from June-end, there was a pause with scanty rainfall in some pockets.
After a prolonged dry spell from June to mid-August, the district received 113 mm of rainfall as against normal rainfall of 146 mm in the last week of August.
The rainfall recorded by Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre (KSNDMC) shows that farmers in 29 of the 32 hoblis in Kalaburagi district have deficit rain up to 57% , while three hoblis including Afzalpur, Aland and Madana hipparaga received 114 mm, 152 mm and 159mm against the normal rainfall of 104mm, 142mm and 137 mm respectively.
Buoyed by early monsoon this year, most farmers have switched over to short-duration crops. Black gram has been sown in 41,974 hectares against the targeted area of 25,000 hectares and similarly the area of green gram also increased to 53,874 hectares against the targeted area of 35,100 hectares.
Till the end of July, farmers had completed sowing red gram in more than 3.22 lakh hectares of land, and owing to the good rain in August and revival of sowing in a few pockets of the districts, the sowing of red gram is expected to be completed in at least 3.65 lakh hectares this year.
State president of the Karnataka Pranta Raitha Sangha Maruti Manpade said that rain recorded during the end of August would only help the long-term crops such as red gram and jowar.
“Around 40% of the short-duration standing crop withered due to want of water during July. Though farmers somehow managed to save their crop, the incessant rain that lashed for the last one week has affected harvesting,” Mr. Manpade said.
He added that because of an unusual long gap in rains even red gram crop is showing stunted growth.
Veerabharappa Patil, a farmer from Sindagi village on the outskirts of Kalaburagi had sown green gram in two acres of land but he had suffered losses due to lack of rain, however the marginal farmer said that he depends on vegetable crops cultivated on four acres of land.
Similarly, the harvesting of green gram and black gram cultivated in 6 acres of land by Mallikarjun Kalshetty in Chittapur taluk came to halt due to rains as farmer fear further damage to their already spoiled crop.
