BHUBANESWAR: Two weeks of incessant showers have completely wiped out rainfall deficit of first two months of the monsoon, reviving the prospects of a good agricultural season in Odisha.
The State Agriculture department said the farm sector is back on track following incessant rains. “Preliminary estimate says farmers have recovered 90 to 95 per cent of their crops while the overall crop coverage is fast catching up,” Director, Agriculture, R Santh Gopalan told this paper.
As on Wednesday, the State has received 376.3 mm rain, a whopping 49 per cent jump over the normal rainfall of 252.2 mm during the period.
This is in stark contrast to June when the rainfall situation was extremely grim. Against the normal rainfall of 216.5 mm, the State had received just 98.4 mm, registering 54.5 per cent deficit. As many as 29 districts had recorded highly deficient rainfall last month.
However, the second and third weeks of the current month have proved to be the game-changer with at least 300 mm rain recorded by the State during the period July 10-23.
The back-to-back low-pressure systems off the Odisha coast saw almost all districts receive over 400 mm rain except Koraput, Ganjam and Bhadrak, which recorded sub-300 mm showers. Jagatsinghpur district received 107 per cent excess rain, the highest during the month.
Thanks to the rains, the crop coverage now stands at 15 lakh hectare for paddy and non-paddy crops against the kharif target of 61.5 lakh hectare.
Santh Gopalan said one more spell of rain before August 5 will leave the farm sector in normal condition.
“Barring Padampur (Bargarh), Sinapali (Nuapada) and Dasamantpur (Koraput) blocks, there is no major rainfall deficit in other blocks of the State. We are hopeful of another round of showers later this month,” he said.
The Met department said model prediction shows formation of another system by July 25 off the coast. This means rainfall activity will resume by July 28 and may continue for two or three days.
The predicted system may not be very active, rather it will be stationary for a while, the weather office said.