Hubballi: Sixty-five year old farmer Maruteppa Laddiyavar of Amaragol village waited all day at the Dharwad cattle market on Tuesday for a good price for his two prize winning bulls.
He was selling them with a heavy heart as they had won him prizes at several bull racing competitions. But lack of fodder and acute shortage of drinking water in his village had left him with no choice.
As the day progressed his hopes began to sink as both agents and butchers offered him a much lower price for the two bulls than he had anticipated. Giving in, he finally sold them for a throwaway price, becoming yet another sorry victim of the drought .
With farmersi steering clear of jowar and wheat during both the kharif and rabi seasons for two consecutive years owing to the poor monsoon, several taluks of North Karnataka are facing a severe shortage of fodder.
Although the district administration has set up fodder banks, they have failed to meet the requirements of farmers, who are worried their troubles will only worsen in summer.
Stalked by middlemen ready to take advantage of their distress, they sell their cattle cheap. The middlemen later end up making a hefty profit by selling the cattle for a much higher price in neighbouring states.
"Every farmer who has two cattle, needs at least two quintals of fodder to feed them every week. The fodder banks set up by the government cannot meet this requirement. With lakes too drying up, there's no water for the cattle either, forcing us to sell them at a throwaway price. We hardly get four to five pots of drinking water every day from the tankers sent by the district administration," said farmer Jagadish Pujar of Yaraguppi village in Kundagol taluk.
Dharwad deputy director of animal husbandry, Manjunath Palegar, when contacted, said that the administration had already opened 14 fodder banks in the district and 25 more fodder banks would be opened within the next few days depending on the demand from farmers.
