“These are extremely tough times as we are dealing with a fourth consecutive drought year. Standing crops of chilli, cotton and red-gram that I cultivated in five, two and three acres of land respectively are slowing drying up. I have already spent around Rs. 1.25 lakh that I had borrowed from traders at APMC,” Huligeppa Gajjinamane, a farmer from Jalibenchi village in Raichur taluk, told The Hindu on Monday.
As he could not repay his three previous years’ loans because of crop-loss caused by droughts, his outstanding private loan has now grown to around Rs. 7.25 lakh. When the Department of Meteorology forecast above-normal rainfall before the onset of monsoon, he hoped to clear all his loans at one go. However, the continued dry spell for the last month has shattered all his hopes.
Mr. Huligeppa represents lakhs of farmers of Raichur district. The disturbing images of red-gram, green-gram, cotton, chilli, pearl millet (bajra), paddy, groundnut and other plants yellowing owing to heat stress can be seen across rural areas, except parts of Sindhanur taluk where paddy fields received relatively better quantity of water from Tungabhadra Left Bank Canal (TLBC).
The district received above-normal rainfall in June and July thereby raising the hopes of farmers. However, the negligible rainfall of 27 mm received in August against the normal rainfall of 102 mm (-73 per cent deficit as on Sunday) left them devastated.
Switch to red-gramHit hard by the pink-bollworm pest that destroyed the Bt cotton crop in the last kharif season, most of the farmers have switched to red-gram this year. As a result, the red-gram cultivation area expanded from 40,000 hectares in last year to over 85,000 hectares this year.
The area for cotton cultivation area shrunk from 60,000 hectares to 30,000 hectares. The area of bajra cultivation also expanded from 35,000 hectares to 47,000 hectares. However, the change in crop pattern helped little as the dry spell invariably hit them all.
Transplanting paddy cropOf the 1,35,000 hectares of paddy fields along the TLBC, only half have seen transplantation. Many paddy growers in Sindhanur taluk, whose fields received water from TLBC, could complete paddy transplantation.
However, most farmers in Manvi and Raichur taluks that fall at the tail-end of TLBC, are still waiting for water to take up transplantation work.
New methodThe paddy crop that was sown using the traditional seed drilling method that requires less water compared to the transplanting method is also drying up as a result of heat stress.
