The sun shone bright on Sunday at many places in the erstwhile Adilabad district after a gap of about one month. At any other time, it would have been a welcome phenomenon among farmers, but not now.
“We need rain, not sunshine,” said a worried Chilkuri Keshav Reddy, a cotton farmer from Waghapur in Adilabad. “We have had no rain for over two weeks now and sunny weather will hasten wilting of our crop,” he explained.
Dry spell
Until mid-July, Adilabad and Kumram Bheem Asifabad recorded excess rainfall, while Mancherial and Nirmal received normal monsoon. The scenario, however, is changing owing to the continuing dry spell.
But for some fields that were hit by the pink boll worm pestilence, crops are in good condition owing to rainfall in the second week of July. “But the forecast that there will be no rain in August and September has made us jittery,” Mr. Keshav Reddy observed.
