Telangana farmers back in action as rains stay away

Agricultural activity has gained full momentum for the Vanakalam (Kharif) season as sowing operations have been taken up in around 98.5 lakh acres as on Saturday

Hyderabad: Telangana’s farmers now have a never-say-die attitude. Despite their Vanakalam plans being first hampered by a delayed monsoon, and then shattered completely by an unprecedented rainfall and floods, they are back in the fields in just a couple of weeks and are working with double the vigour to make up for lost time.

Agricultural activity has gained full momentum for the Vanakalam (Kharif) season as sowing operations have been taken up in around 98.5 lakh acres as on Saturday.

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The sowing operations in Telangana were severely affected due to the delayed monsoon season. However, the State government had their back, with the contingency plans in place and the official machinery encouraging farmers to take up short-span crops and varieties to ensure a remunerative season. Just when things appeared to be on track, the torrential rains struck, affecting sowing operations to a large extent apart from causing severe damage to crops that were already sown.

The total crop sowing area was just 42.76 lakh acres about a month ago as against 59.5 lakh acres as on the same day last year. Similarly, it was around 68.8 lakh acres about two weeks ago against 79.17 lakh acres as on the same day last year.

“The normal crop cultivation area during the Vanakalam season is 1.24 crore acres. Due to the delayed monsoon, sowing operations also were delayed. But following directions from the State government, we prepared a contingency plan and were able to convince farmers to scale up the sowing operations which is yielding good results,” an Agriculture official said.

Accordingly, a total 98.5 lakh acres were currently under cultivation, which is nearly 80 per cent of the season’s normal area of 1.24 crore acres. This is higher than the 83.4 lakh acres as on date in the last Vanakalam season. The sowings of rainfed crops like jowar, bajra, maize, ragi, pulses, groundnut, soybean, cotton and others, is nearing completion. The raising of paddy nurseries and sowings will be completed by the first week of September, officials said.

Paddy sowing has been completed in around 37 lakh acres against an expected 49.86 lakh acres during the season. The sowing of millets has been completed in around 5.24 lakh acres and pulses in another 5.23 lakh acres. The cotton cultivation has been taken up in around 44.4 lakh acres against the season normal area of 50.59 lakh acres.