In many low-lying areas, crops have started swooning; officials say it is currently difficult to assess the financial losses.
Incessant rains in Karnataka have adversely affected the kharif cultivation in the state’s coastal districts. Water-logging in the more than 20,000 hectares of paddy fields in low-lying areas might result in 40% yield of kharif crops in these districts.
Officials of the department of agriculture said that kharif crops in Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Uttara Kannada, Shimoga, Hassan, Kodagu and parts of Mysore and Mandya districts have been affected due to the untimely and copious rains.
The monsoons should have subsided into a mere drizzle in this phase, helping the paddy crop to form grains. But copious rains in the past few days have dashed the process, stunting growth of paddy grains, said research officers of the department.
In many low-lying areas, the crops that have started swooning due to the rains, may not recover. Officials said that it was currently difficult to assess the losses in financial terms.
Anticipating a normal monsoon, the agricultural department had advised farmers to go in for medium rain-fed varieties of paddy like MO4, Jaya, Nethravati and Jayanti. The coastal areas heavily depend on these varieties too. “The rains received since the beginning of the kharif season 2011 till August 27 was normal, but incessant rains in the past five days have left the fields flooded,” said Ramesh Shetty, a farmer in Vamadapadavu, Buntwal taluk (Dakshina Kannada district), which is the highest paddy-growing area in the coastal districts.
Similar is the condition in Kundapur, Karkala and Udupi taluks in Udupi district; Haliyal, Joida, Honnavar, Bhatkal, Karwar in Uttara Kannada; and Puttur, Mangalore and Belthangady taluk in Dakshina Kannada district. The total land under kharif crops in these districts is 95,000 hectares, with the largest being Dakshina Kannada at 37,000 hectares.
AS Haldipur, an expert in the Uttara Kannada District Raitha Samparka Kendra, said, “Many of us have gone in for normal monsoon varieties thinking that it would be normal monsoons, but the monsoon has behaved abnormally in the past one week.”
Research officer of the agriculture department N Palichandra said that the rains was definitely a blow to the crops in lowland farms, but the upland farms will stand to gain.
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