Maharashtra heading towards crop crisis as rains play truant

While the panjandrums at the State Agriculture Directorate are trying to play down the situation, the official statistics clearly underline that there is cause for concern.

The department’s official report on crop and weather situation in the State for the week ending on July 15, a copy of which is with The Indian Express, shows that out of 321 talukas in the State, rainfall has been medium to deficient in 220 talukas. Besides, 22 talukas have not received any rainfall so far.

"There is a grave need for rainfall in Konkan, Madhya Maharashtra, Marathwada, and Wardha and Nagpur districts in Vidarbha for the growth of the Kharif cropsalready sown, and for the completion of sowing of remaining crops," states the report.

In Vidarbha, seven districts have received deficient rainfall — ranging from -3 per cent in Amravati to -40 per cent in Nagpur district.

For the farmers of the region, burdened as they are with heavy debts due to failure of the earlier two crops, the jinx seems to continue as the monsoon is expected to remain below normal for the week ending July 22, according to the weather department.

It may be recalled that some farmers in this semi-arid region committed suicide following two successive crop failures due to unseasonal rains followed by pest attack.

Dr D S Desai, Director (Weather Forecast) India Meteorology Department told The Indian Express that except for Buldhana and Yavatmal districts, the monsoon in the region had so far been below normal with Nagpur facing the worst deficiency of -40 per cent.

Over all, since June 1, the monsoon had remained on the deficient side and was most likely to continue like thisfor another week ending July 22.

"So far only one-and-a-half-months of monsoon have passed, and hence it cannot be said that the monsoon has failed in the region. It is likely improve in the coming days," he observed. It may be noted that the IMD has predicted a normal monsoon for the country with 98 per cent rainfall of the average value.

However, this assurance appears to be of hardly any use for the farmers, most of whom have already sown the cotton crop and are desperately waiting for a good spell of rain in the freshly tilled and sown fields.

The delay in monsoon has virtually caused panic among the farmers for whom further delay in rainfall might spell doom for their crops. In most of these affected districts, the sowing of crops has been nearly completed. In districts such as Buldhana, Akola, Amravati, Yavatmal, and Wardha more than 80 per cent of the fields have been sown with Kharif crops.

Vidarbha’s monsoon jinx continues

Barely had Vidarbha come out of its last year’s erraticmonsoon fury, that the region’s monsoon jinx appears to be dragging on for the second consecutive year. Following is the percentage rainfall recorded in the eight districts under the Vidarbha weather division between the period June 1 to July 15 during this year’s monsoon.

Akola – 12 per cent, Amravati -17 per cent, Buldhana + 8 per cent, Chandrapur -19 per cent, Gadchiroli -17 per cent, Nagpur -40 per cent, Wardha -26 per cent and Yavatmal -3 per cent.