Widespread rain in the past two days is expected to help farmers resume sowing for the kharif season in Gulbarga and Yadgir districts.
Sources in the Agriculture Department told The Hindu on Tuesday that Gulbarga district recorded an average rainfall of 29.3 mm on Monday. The district recorded 44.37 mm of rainfall from July 2 till Monday.
The rain was not only widespread but it also helped retain moisture in the soil and help the seeds germinate successfully.
Sources said farmers were likely to resume sowing from Wednesday. Although the time for taking up sowing of black gram, soya bean and sesamum was over, farmers can still hope to get something out in this short period.
Despite the recommendations by the Agriculture Department not to take up sowing of black gram, sesamum, and soya bean, farmers still go for the sowing of these three considering the remunerative returns if the crops survived.
Sources said most of the areas meant for green gram, black gram, soya bean and sesamum cultivation, which remained unsown due to lack of rain, would now shift to red gram. The drought resistant red gram would survive and provide some return to the farmers even if the rain failed in the future.
As per available details, farmers have completed sowing on 15 per cent of the targeted area. Against the targeted area of 5.7 lakh hectares (ha) during the kharif season, farmers have completed sowing on 88,078 ha. The farmers in Chincholi taluk have completed sowing on 58 per cent of the targeted area. The figure for Afzalpur is 22 per cent, Gulbarga 16 per cent, and Sedam is 13 per cent. The situation was the worst in Chitapur where sowing was complete on only one per cent of the targeted area and in only 5 per cent of the targeted area has been covered in Aland.
Sowing has resumed in Yadgir too and farmers were busy sowing red gram, cotton and bajra.
According to the Agriculture Department, the highest rainfall of 131.6 mm was recorded in Yadgir taluk. While the lowest of 2.3 mm was recorded in Surpur taluk, 26.2 mm of rainfall was recorded in Shahapur taluk. Chetana Patil, Joint Director, Agriculture, said sowing was complete on 9,778 ha of the targeted 2.69 lakh ha.
