The horticulture farmers in the mandals abutting Penna river in the district, famous for their luscious Banisha variety of mangoes and award winning sized Sapota (Chikoo) besides sweet lime orchards, are facing an uncertain future.
Lack of groundwater coupled with the heat wave has forced some farmers to take extreme steps to save their orchards, while many others are letting the trees dry, and even die, as it is beyond their financial means to save them.
The mandals abutting Penna river — Pamidi, Tadipatri, Yadiki, Yellanuru and Putluru — in the Anantapur revenue division have been home to luscious mangoes, sweet lime and sapota primarily while many have taken to guava cultivation too in the last decade.
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“It is hard to maintain these orchards in the existing conditions. The ground water has depleted beyond reach. Lakhs of rupees have been wasted on drilling deep holes (borewells) in our orchards with little yield. The last time Penna river witnessed decent flows is at least two decades ago. With no ground water recharge in sight, surface water is the only answer and chances of that also seem remote,” says B. Ravindranath Reddy, a farmer from the Chukkaluru village of Tadipatri mandal, who owns 35 acres of sapota orchard, and has been a winner of State-level awards for producing high quality sapota using modern agricultural practices a few years ago.
Just a decade ago, he and his brothers were successful farmers earning more than Rs 7 lakh to RS. 8 lakh a year off their orchards. Today, they are just a bunch of farmers who paying money for water tankers to save their orchards spending lakhs of rupees every year.
“I have spent Rs 1.5 lakh on buying water for my plants. But the crop is looking bad, as the water is insufficient for producing quality fruit with enough juice in it, while the excessive summer heat is dehydrating the trees faster,” says Narasimha Reddy of Vennapusapalli village of the Yellanuru mandal of the district, who is trying hard to save his 13-year-old sweet lime trees. In all, while the government scheme of “Panta Sanjeevani’ is yet to make any mark in the district, the farmers feel surface water alone can save their day, and that if no solution comes into sight, in the next year or so, many more farmers will be left with no option but to consider extreme steps.
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“Government scheme ‘Panta Sanjeevani’ is yet
to make any mark in the district”