Drought-like conditions in Mahabubnagar

• Farmers forced to grow leafy vegetables
• Asked to avoid regular Rabi crops

Mahabubnagar: Farmers are facing immense hardships cultivating their crops with the scanty rainfall and the drought like conditions prevailing in the district. Moreover, the crops are affected due to non-availability of chemicals and fertilisers.

They are also unable to store the food grains. Although they cultivated crops on large tracts of agriculture land, the per hectare yield is very low.

In order to overcome the crisis, the farmers in Sallonipalli village of Hanvada mandal in the district have stopped cultivating Rabi crops, and started growing vegetables and leafy vegetables. The farmers said that they had incurred huge financial losses by investing on raising maize and paddy crops. Now they turned their focus on growing tomatoes, onions and leafy vegetables like gongura, kothimeera and palakoora.

During the last two seasons, rainfall was scanty and the underground water resources were getting depleted fast. As a result, there was a drastic fall in the area of cultivation as farmers came to the conclusion that it was a waste to carry out farming. Generally, during the Rabi season, farmers cultivate groundnut and Bengal gram. But this year, the weather conditions were unfavourable.

With deficit rainfall, lakes and ponds remained without water in many places.

Last year, paddy was cultivated on 2,09,719 hectares of land; but this year, only 1,28,508 hectares of land was cultivated owing to lack of irrigation facilities. The Rabi crop, which depends on electricity and borewells, was cultivated only in 13,100 hectares of land.

The drastic fall in the area of cultivation and the yield per hectare is attributed to the shortage of fertilisers and electricity in the district.

Speaking to The Hans India here on Friday, Bhagawat Swaroop, Joint Director of the Department of Agriculture, said the farmers in the district were getting ready to cultivate crops in 32,000 hectares but with the coming summer, it would be better for them to grow leafy vegetables.

He said that the crops would not wither away if the farmers use the fertilisers in the right quantities.

Farmers in the district said that it was up to the state government to protect the interests of the farming community as large number of farmers have been fed up with agriculture and have come to the conclusion that farming is a non-profitable venture.

By: Narender Chary