Centre draws up special plan to speed up rabi sowing in 225 dry districts

New Delhi: The government has drawn up contingency plans to facilitate sowing in the current rabi season in as many as 225 districts across the country which have been affected due to the erratic monsoon this year in the wake of the El Nino weather pattern.

“We are taking contingency planning to a new level with the development of a dynamic dashboard that will integrate the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) weekly forecasts, data on water bodies and other relevant information to help officials make decisions based on local conditions,” Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) Director General ML Jat told journalists.

The proposed dashboard would allow users to access information at the district level, he added.

The ICAR chief said a district initially identified as vulnerable to drought could move out of that category if it received adequate rainfall in the coming days. The assessment should therefore be revised using updated IMD forecasts and rainfall data, including projections for the following 15 days.

Rabi crops, including wheat, have been sown in around 3.8 million hectares as of October 30, which is around 46 per cent less than the same period last year. However, this is also due to untimely rains in the wheat belt, due to which sowing has been delayed and is expected to accelerate now, a senior official explained.

The ICAR chief said that the new dashboard would cover the entire country, rather than just the 225 districts identified for contingency planning. He said the platform would not be restricted to contingency planning. It would also provide advisories for normal agricultural conditions, helping farmers and officials decide what action to take in different circumstances.

He said ICAR ultimately intended to integrate the dashboard with the AgriStack initiative so that information from different agricultural sources could be brought together.

Director General ML Jat said ICAR had also constituted a task force to examine opportunities to increase the cultivation of oilseeds and pulses in fallow areas left after the rice harvest. These areas offered considerable scope for crop diversification, he added.

“In places where residual soil moisture was insufficient for wheat, farmers could consider growing suitable oilseed and pulse crops instead,” Jat observed.

He also said a separate soil health policy was expected to be introduced in the next two to four months to enable farmers to plan efficient fertiliser use based on nutrient deficiency.

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