With little hope of revival of monsoon, the Telangana government is going ahead with its contingency plan to bail out the farmers by making available adequate stock of seed for short duration crops in the left over period of kharif and early rabi.
A part of the plan has already come into effect as it was designed for a scenario where the rains were not received up to August 15. It contemplated taking steps for an area of 10.11 lakh hectares requiring 1.57 lakh quintals of seed of all varieties. The second part of the plan envisaged covering an area of 11.27 lakh hectares and seed requirement of 2.30 lakh quintals if rains were not received till August 31. The normal cropped area in Telangana was 41.43 lakh hectares but the sowings were taken up so far over 31 lakh hectares.
The contingency plan proposed zero coverage of cotton if there were no rains till August 15. However, the normal cotton area of 16.32 lakh hectares was already achieved by then. In the case of paddy, however, it was planned to cover 35,000 hectares if rains were not received up to August 15 and zero acreage if the situation continued up to August 31. The sowings of paddy were taken up over 3.68 lakh hectares out of season normal of 10.59 lakh hectares by August 19.
The Agriculture Commissioner G.D. Priyadarshini told The Hindu that there was no shortage of seed and fertilizers to be able to implement the plan. She said all crops faced stunted growth due to adverse seasonal conditions. Today, she said, the soyabean crop in a small area in Nizamabad was also attacked by spodoptera pest. She admitted there would be lower yields this season.
The production of paddy in Telangana in kharif last year was 28.56 lakh tonnes on a cropped area of 9.20 lakh hectares. The cotton and sugarcane production in the whole year was 34.56 lakh tonnes and 31.61 lakh tonnes respectively.