VIJAYAWADA: As much as 87 per cent of the 37.42 lakh hectares of agricultural land (normal) for the present Kharif season has been brought under cultivation. With a good rainfall in the State so far, farmers are expecting a bumper yield and hope the production of food grains will increase.
Though there was a brief spell in the first week of September during which the rainfall was less than expected, the situation started returning to normal, with rains lashing different parts of the State since the last two days. The Met department predicts a good rainfall for next one week to 10 days, bringing cheer to the farmers.
“The situation is better than normal, as the Kharif crops at different stages of cultivation appear healthy and one can expect a good yield. How better it would be compared to the previous year, we could only assess after Dasara,” said AP State Agriculture Mission vice-chairman MVS Nagi Reddy.
In fact, the situation is no different across the country, as the Ministry of Agriculture, in a press release, said there has been an increase in area of cultivation this season compared to the previous Kharif. Sowing of paddy still continues while sowing of pulses, coarse cereals and oilseeds is almost over. The final sowing figures for Kharif are expected to be closed on October 1, 2020, the report said.
According to the weekly report from the Agriculture department of Andhra Pradesh, paddy is at nurseries for transplantation and maximum tillering stage. Jowar, bajra and ragi are at vegetative stage. Maize is at knee high to tasselling and cob formation stage. Cotton, maize, red gram and chillies are at sowing to vegetative stage. Early sown paddy is at panicle initiation to harvesting stage. Early Kharif pulses are at flowering to pod formation stage.
Early sown groundnut and sesame are at flowering to pod formation and harvesting stage. Sunflower is in the flowering to grain setting stage. Cotton is at vegetative to boll formation stage. Sugarcane is at cane formation stage. Special Commissioner for Agriculture Arun Kumar said as on September 10, as against 37.4 lakh hectares of normal area for Kharif, 32.39 lakh hectares have been covered already with different crops, which are at different stages of cultivation. Further 17.4 lakh hectares were also covered with various horticulture crops. As against the 17.5 lakh tonnes of different types of fertilisers, till September 10, as much as 15.55 lakh metric tonnes have been sold and another 7.58 lakh metric tonnes are available.
Out of the 13 districts, crop situation is encouraging in 11 districts, while two districts — Srikakulam and Vizianagaram — which received deficient rainfall so far, yield will be less than expected. “It is not a complete crop loss, but the yield would be less than expected,” a senior official from the agriculture department said.
Srikakulam and Vizianagaram received 30.3 per cent and 20.4 per cent deficient rainfall which was discouraging for the farmers in the two districts, who expected a normal rainfall. About 22 out of 34 mandals were affected due to lack of rains in Vizianagaram and out of those 22, as many as 13 are severely affected.
However, in Visakhapatnam and twin Godavari districts, crop situation is better and agriculture officials are confident of getting maximum yield this season. While Visakhapatnam received normal rainfall so far, twin Godavari districts recorded 20 and 25 per cent surplus rainfall. Recent Godavari floods only saw a marginal acreage of crops (around 4,000 hectares) getting inundated.
In Krishna district, rainfall as on date has been 10 per cent more than normal and even then it is considered normal. While paddy has received optimum water for irrigation, floods in Krishna river saw 30 per cent damage to green gram cultivated in upland areas of western mandals of the district.
While farmers in Nellore are busy selling paddy they harvested to the paddy procurement centres, farmers in Chittoor, which received second highest surplus rainfall this monsoon till date, are cultivating different crops. It is Anantapur district which received the highest surplus rainfall of 68.9 per cent and the farmers have taken up traditional groundnut and other crops. Focus is more on horticulture crops. In Kadapa and Kurnool, which received surplus rainfall, farmers expect a bumper harvest, if everything goes well till the end.