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Farmers in Karnataka suspend sowing

Monday, 28 July 2008

The agricultural activities in the state have slowed down and many taluks in the state have reportedly suspended sowing due to long dry spell. According to the agriculture department though the sowing has not been severely affected, agriculture activities in kharif crops, pulses and oilseeds have slowed down owing to the dry spell this year. Farmers have apparently suspended the sowing activities in rain dependent land, anticipating rains in the coming days. Farmers were perturbed over the dry spell in the neighbouring Wayanad in Kerala, the prime catchment area for the Kabini reservoir in the H D Kote taluk in Mysore district, which irrigates over 1.2 lakh acres of land. According to the department sources, 'Kabini is the first reservoir in the state to reach the full reservoir level when the southwest monsoon hits Kerala first. With Wayanand being the catchment area, the dam usually reaches its maximum level in June itself. But this year, the situation was not the same following failure of rains in June. The water level in Kabini is around 2,275 feet as against the maximum level of 2,284 feet, said the sources adding that Irrigation in the Mysore district was primarly depended on Kabini, Nugu and Harangi dams. The southern districts of the State have seen incessant rain during the last couple of days and sowing had taken place on 35 lakh hectares of land against the target of 74 lakh hectares, according to officials in the Agriculture Department. The Mysore and other districts in the Cauvery basin had an advantage over others since these districts were getting water from four major dams, Kabihni, Harangi in Kodagu, Hemavarthy in Hassan district and Krishnaraja Sagar dam in Mandya district. Farmers in the northern districts including Gulbarga, which have received an average of 75 mm rainfall as against to the normal 220 mm, who have been depending on the cultivation of green grams, black grams and sesame seeds on their rain fed land, are now banking their hopes in red gram and sunflower. Owing to this change in the pattern, the area under the red gram is likely to cross four lakh hectares while the sunflower may cross about two lakh hectares. Since sowing of paddy requires copious water, the farmers in these districts were unsure of taking up the paddy or other alternate crops like ragi and groundnut. The Agriculture Department however has appealed the farmers of Mysore, Mandya, Chamarajangar and Kodagu districts  to adopt semi dry crops like maize,  sunflower and ragi. The agricultural department in Hubli and Gadag districts are hoping to tackle deficit monsoon rainfall and power shortage through cloud seeding. Cloud seeding involves a process of spraying silver iodide, a chemical that aids precipitation, from an aircraft, on clouds to cause rain. According to the meteorologists there a need to monitor through radars rain-bearing clouds in a region before the aircraft is sent to spray the chemical. "A clouds life is around 40 minutes. But if there are no clouds, nothing can be done," says Arvind Sharma, whose Bangalore-based company Agni Aviation is carrying out the cloud-seeding operations in Hubli and Gadag districts. Sharma says there has been an increase of 15-20% in rainfall in the regions where the operations have been carried out. Karnataka had last effected a cloud-seeding in 2003 when most parts of the state were affected by drought. The month of July has witnessed the worst monsoon rainfall in the last five years in the state. According to the met department, the state has received 241 mm of rainfall as against a normal 385 mm from June 1 to July 22, a departure of about minus 37 per cent.  However, the met department has said that heavy to very heavy rains are likely to occur at many places in Konkan, Goa, coastal Karnataka, Kerala, Lakshadweep and coastal Andhra Pradesh within next 48 to 72 hours. This may once again revive the hopes of farmers.

 

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