VIJAYAWADA: Rising petrol and diesel prices are set to hit the farming community hard across the State at a crucial time when cultivators are preparing for the Kharif season and intensifying operations related to agriculture.
Farmers allege that the recent hike of around Rs 4 per litre (including Tuesday hike of 90 paisa) in petrol and diesel prices, with diesel prices crossing the Rs 100 mark, has placed an additional financial burden on them even before the sowing season begins.
At present, farmers are engaged in land preparation works such as levelling, ploughing and tillage to make fields suitable for cultivation. Most of these operations are carried out using tractors and diesel-powered agricultural machinery. Farmers said fields are generally ploughed and levelled two to three times under the broadcasting method before sowing starts.
Earlier, tractor owners used to charge around Rs 800 per acre for a single round of ploughing or tillage work. However, following the latest increase in diesel prices, the charges have reportedly gone up to nearly Rs 1,000 per acre for every round of operation.
Farmers pointed out that this alone would increase cultivation expenditure by Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000 per acre during the initial farming stage.
The burden is even higher in the traditional paddy cultivation method involving seedling transplantation. In this method, fields require four to five rounds of wet tillage and puddling operations before transplantation can be taken up.
Farmers said these activities consume more diesel and require prolonged tractor usage, resulting in a steep rise in operational expenses.
Apart from field preparation, fuel price hikes are also expected to increase harvesting costs in the coming months. During harvest season, tractors are extensively used for threshing operations. Farmers said tractor operators were earlier charging nearly Rs 1,000 for threshing activities, but the rates are now expected to increase to around Rs 1,500 due to the diesel price hike.
Many farmers are also increasingly depending on mechanised harvesting and threshing machines due to labour shortages in rural areas. At present, machine operators charge nearly Rs 4,000 per hour for harvesting activities. Farmers fear that these charges too may witness a further hike in the coming weeks owing to rising diesel prices.
On the other hand, thousands of farmers across the State rely on petrol and diesel-powered motors for irrigation purposes, especially in areas dependent on borewells and lift irrigation systems. The hike in petrol and diesel prices is therefore expected to increase irrigation expenditure as well, adding further pressure on already stressed farming households.
Farmers said the increase in fuel prices comes at a time when they are already struggling with rising input costs such as seeds, fertilisers, pesticides and labour charges. Small and marginal farmers, who depend mostly on rented machinery and borrowed investments for cultivation, are likely to be the worst affected.
Several farmers expressed anger over the increase in petrol and diesel prices and alleged that the government was providing only marginal hikes in Minimum Support Price (MSP) while increasing the burden through higher fuel costs.
‘’The government has increased just Rs 72 per quintal for 2026-27 season for paddy, but due to oil price hike, the farmers like me must bear the burden of around 5,000 per acre, which is very disappointing’’ said K Sainath, a farmer of Kavipuram of Krishna district. He said the additional expenditure on fuel would eventually reduce profit margins and increase debt among cultivators.
