With Ballari district recording 18 % deficient rainfall during June and in only drizzles, that too, scattered, during the first week of July, sowing for the current kharif season is going on at a slow pace. Only 7.2 % area of the targeted 3.65 lakh hectares has been covered.
The district recorded an average actual rainfall of 56.6 mm during June as against the average normal of 69.4 mm.
Only Ballari (86.7 mm) and Sirguppa (84.9 mm) received excess rainfall than normal while the other five taluks — Hadagali (44.6 mm), Hosapete (64.3 mm), Hagari Bommanahalli (35.2 mm), Kudligi (28.8 mm) and Sandur recorded deficient rainfall ranging between 13 % and 54 %.
Though farmers have, following relatively a good spell of rainfall in June, taken up preliminary agricultural operations such as levelling land and applying manure, they have not been able to take up sowing for want of more rain.
Of the sowing target of 3.65 lakh hectares, two-thirds of the area is dependent on rain, while a third is irrigated.
Sowing in the irrigated tracts, spread over parts of Ballari, Sirguppa, Hosapete and Hadagali, will begin once water from the Tungabhadra dam is let into the canals.
Paddy, jowar, maize, bajra, tur, groundnut, cotton, sunflower are among the major crops cultivated in the district.
Even chilli, a horticultural crop, is grown in vast patches of Ballari and Sirguppa taluks.
Due to the failure of monsoon in the last two years, Tungabhadra dam did not have enought water.
Meanwhile, reports that inflow at the dam was gradually increasing have brought some smiles on the faces of farmers.
