Rains bring back hopes to farmers in erstwhile Medak

Continuous rainfall has improved water availability across the erstwhile Medak district, reviving hopes among paddy farmers. Fresh inflows into irrigation projects and favourable rainfall forecasts have encouraged farmers to accelerate transplantation during the first fortnight of August

Sangareddy: Continuous rains during the last four days have boosted the hopes of farmers, particularly paddy farmers in the erstwhile Medak district. During the past one week, the erstwhile Medak district has received considerable rains. Until July 20, the three districts had recorded deficit rains. With the recent rains, all three districts’ average rainfall improved considerably.

Minor irrigation tanks, streams, and medium irrigation projects such as Ghanpur anicut, Pocharam dam, Manjeera dam, Nallavagu, several check dams and other projects came to life. Due to heavy rains in Godavari catchment area, the irrigation department has also started lifting water from Yellampally to Mid Manir, which would eventually lifted to four reservoirs, built as part of Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme (KLIS), located in Siddipet district.

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With IMD predicting a good amount of rain during August, the farmers have started the paddy transplantation across the erstwhile Medak. The farmers have completed paddy transplantation in just 60,000 acres in Siddipet until today against last year’s Vanakalam area of 3.85 lakh acres.

In Medak district, the farmers had completed paddy transplantation on 1.20 lakh acres against last year’s 30,000 acres. In Sangareddy, the farmers completed paddy cultivation on 30,000 acres against last year’s 1.57 lakh acres. However, the farmers were preparing to fasttrack the transplantation during the first fortnight of August. Even though the irrigation department declared that they would not release water from irrigation from Singur this year, the farmers who had borewells were preparing to take up transplantation.

Against a total area of 14.80 lakh acres under cultivation, including all crops, in erstwhile Medak, the farmers could complete sowing only on 9 lakh acres so far. Sangareddy district, which had majority area under other than paddy crops, had completed the sowing on 6 lakh acres so far while the two remaining districts, where paddy is a major crop, were lagging behind.