State’s farm yield down
40%, loss put at Rs 4,500 cr
Chittaranjan Tembhekar |
TNN
 Mumbai:
Your spiralling food and grocery bills could go up even further.
Maharashtra, reeling under one of the worst droughts ever, is all
set to face an acute shortage of agricultural produce till the
next monsoon.
The state government this week conveyed, through a memorandum,
to the Centre that its agro yields were set to drop by a drastic
40%, thanks to the scanty rainfall till August 25. This means an
estimated loss of Rs 4,499.90 crore from crop production, which
will affect at least 4.9 crore people. The state has now demanded
just over Rs 15,000 crore as financial assistance from the Centre,
which includes the Rs 7,263-crore Vidarbha package.
The memorandum says that sowing operations were 99% complete,
but because of the continuing dry spell since July 23, 2009, the
crops are still in the vegetative growth stage. Of the 355 talukas
in the state, 221 talukas in 27 districts have received 50% less
rainfall. Because of this “the estimated area of crop damage is
96.77 lakh hectares, out of which 44.28 lakh hectares have
suffered more than 50% loss’’, says the memorandum. The total
drought-hit area is owned by over 33 lakh small and marginal
farmers. Commercial crops set to wilt
Mumbai: Farmers in the state are facing a bleak prospect. Although
paddy transplantation in the Konkan and western Maharashtra is
complete, Vidarbha could complete only 58%, thus reducing the area
under pulse cultivation by 26%. In eastern Vidarbha, the state’s
memorandum to the Centre reveals, an area of more than 2.14 lakh
hectares has been left unplanted.
Due to the dry spell and extreme heat, pests like the semi-looper
and tobacco pest emerged with a vengeance, affecting up to 5 lakh
hectares of cultivated land in Chandrapur, Gadchiroli, Wardha and
Nagpur districts. “The tobacco pest has affected paddy nurseries,
causing extensive damage in eastern Vidarbha,’’ says the
memorandum. “It is feared that a lot of these areas will remain
unsown as there are no prospects of any late-monsoon crops growing
satisfactorily.’’
The memorandum says that commercial crops like soyabean are in
danger of wilting. The areas under moong and udid cultivation had
already come down from 12.94 lakh hectares to 7.62 hectares, and
the crop sown had to be uprooted by farmers since they withered
away. Even the next stage of cotton yield appears to be critical.
“Most of the farmers in Vidarbha and Marathwada depend on cotton
and soyabean as the main source of livelihood,’’ stated the
memorandum, expressing concern over the effect of the drought on
these agro-crisisridden belts which have seen a large number of
farmer suicides in the past.
THE BREAK-UP
Rs 973 crore for fodder production Rs 3,087 crore to combat
damage to kharif crop Rs 851 crore for animal husbandry Rs 1,200
for the sugar crop Rs 570 crore for subsidising wheat, rice, tur,
sugar and palm oil production Rs 802 crore for
employment-generation Rs 400 crore for drinking water supply Rs
886 crore as calamity relief fund Rs 7,236 crore as revised
special package for suicide-prone districts of Vidarbha
Dealer held for hoarding wheat
The Kandivli police raided a grain store opposite
Raghuleela Mall at Kandivli (W) on Thursday and seized 3,600 kg of
wheat worth Rs 72,000. The dealer, Rajesh Bahadur Singh, was
arrested from the store while he was loading wheat sacks into a
tempo.
— Shreya Bhandary
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