Arrival of rain across Telangana with the help of low pressure over the Bay of Bengal is expected to provide much needed relief to the standing crops facing withering condition in over 5.5 lakh acres due to a very long dry spell spread over about 20 days.
Recurrence of rains from August 23 have also provided some solace to the farming community that has been forced to fear another crop failure as the skies refused to open up since the last 20 days. “Standing kharif crops such as maize, cotton, soybean, redgram, greengram, blackgram and jowar were facing serious moisture stress with withering symptoms noticed mostly in Mahabubnagar, Warangal, Nalgonda, Ranga Reddy, Khammam and Medak districts,” a senior official of the agriculture department explained.
Rain started shying away when the crops were in crucial stages of vegetative growth at some places and in a little advanced condition of flowering and pod formation, particularly in case of short-term - pulses such as greengram and blackgram, cereals maize and jowar and oil-seed soybean, which is cultivated as one of the commercial crops.
“We have directed the departmental officials in districts and scientists of the agriculture university, Krishi Vigyan Kendras and District Agricultural Advisory and Transfer of Technology Centres to form joint teams and visit the affected areas extensively suggesting appropriate steps to farmers on soil moisture conservation practices and other crop management measures to avoid crop loss due to adverse seasonal conditions,” the official stated.
But for the dry spell in August, kharif season this year has been promising with the farmers cultivating crops in 35.04 lakh hectares so far against 32.12 lakh ha and 33.19 lakh ha during the two previous years out of the season normal of 43.43 lakh ha. Crops such as maize, redgram, greengram, blackgram and soybean have been cultivated in record extents this year, in tune with the government plans to bring down cotton cultivation to 12.11 lakh ha against the normal extent of about 17 lakh ha.
“Bringing down cotton cultivation has become imperative since most of the farmers’ suicides in the recent years were found to be due to losses suffered in the crop cultivation. Our efforts have been successful to a large extent although we planned to restrict cotton to 10.64 lakh ha and divert them towards soybean, pulses and maize”, the official noted.
