Hyderabad: Deficit in Northeast monsoon rains by 53 per cent in the state has all the signs it could play havoc with farming in the state.
The state receives around 14 per cent of its rainfall during this season. It has manifested in falling groundwater levels, empty tanks in the countryside and increased demand for water tankers in the cities and towns. As a result, the inflows into most reservoirs in the state like Jurala, Tungabhadra, Nagarjunasagar, Pulichintala, Singur and Nizamsagar have fallen to zero.
The average normal rainfall of the Northeast monsoon from October to December is 113.20 mm, while the actual rainfall was 52.70 mm. It was 136 mm last year. Excess rainfall in the last few years had resulted in increased acreage of water guzzling crops like cotton and paddy.
The culprit, experts say, is the lack of an action plan by the agriculture department on crop patterns leading to the increased acreage of water guzzling crops like cotton and paddy. The department had failed to even prepare the action plan for the past two years in the BRS regime. K. Chandrashekhar Rao had as the Chief Minister infamously veered from his position of rooting for paddy and then said growing the crop amounts to choosing a noose.
The department currently does not have an action plan to tide over the situation and efforts to reach out failed to avail any answers.
To make matters worse, rains during the January to February this year were 91 per cent short at 1.1 mm against a normal of 12 mm. The overall average rainfall received from June 1, 2023 to June 6, 2024, was recorded as 914.9 mm as against the normal of 866.4 mm, showing a deviation of 5.60 per cent.
The shortage, though looks small, is however a cause for concern as the state had received 1,235 mm precipitation during the same period last year. This has led to a cumulative fall in water level in the reservoirs at 283.41 TMC feet as on March 6, 2024, while it was 438.77 TMC feet last year. The water level has in these circumstances fallen to 8.7 metres below ground level in February this year, a fall from 7.34 metres below the ground level in the same period last year. The fall has been the highest in Vikarabad, Medak and Kamareddy districts by 13 meters, while in Rangareddy, Sanga Reddy and Medchal water level fell by 12 metres.
However, the total area sown in the state is 66.29 lakh acres as against the season's normal of 54.93 lakh acres. The fall has been more pronounced in the case of paddy by nearly seven lakh acres. The farmer organisations, however, say that this fall is no cause for relief as the water levels in reservoirs are at dead storage level and crops have been sown as usual.
“The agriculture department should have woken up and encouraged crops other than paddy to reduce water usage. It should have devised a crop plan and advised farmers to switch more to pulses and vegetables. The state has a huge deficit of these and relies on other states for them. Failure to do this is forcing farmers now to sink new borewells which cost around Rs 2 lakh per hole and the farmer hardly gets Rs 20,000 per acre if the yield is good, said Sarampally Malla Reddy, vice president, All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS).
Asked for remedial measures he would suggest in this milieu, G.V. Ramanjaneyulu, executive director, the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture from Hyderabad, opines that the deficit in rainfall being normal, the government should opt for life saving irrigation measures.
“Failure to water a crop for more than 14 days would result in loss of crop and would not survive if not watered for 28 days. Some fields are flooded while others are short of water. Pulses, oilseeds and millets can be grown with less water and should have been opted for while avoiding sugarcane, paddy and cotton. In the long term, practices to increase organic matter in the soil should be increased to increase water holding capacity,” he said.
