Let-up in the rain for the last two days has stopped further damage to the standing crops inundated/flooded during the recent spell of heavy rains allowing draining of logged water at least to some extent as also taking up enumeration of the damage by cluster-level officials of the Agriculture Department.
However, large extents of standing crops were either washed away beyond any prospects of revival or silted with sand or mud, leading to near total loss of investment to the farmers concerned.
According preliminary estimates, standing crops were damaged on over 5 lakh acres in the erstwhile Adilabad, Warangal, Karimnagar, Khammam and Nizamabad districts. The damage of standing crops is high on the fields along the courses of rivers, rivulets and low-lying areas. Now that the rain has stopped, damage would be minimised with draining of water, wherever possible.
Officials of the Agriculture Department stated that detailed enumeration would bring out the exact extent of crop-wise damage, including the extent eligible for input subsidy given by the Centre for at least 33% of damage.
The Centre, if satisfied with the assessment of damage after submission of report by the State government, could announce input subsidy up to ₹10,000 per acre.
‘Pulses worst hit’
The officials admitted that damage due to the rains was maximum to pulses such as greengram and blackgram, soybean, paddy, cotton and maize. Crops have been sown/transplanted on about 82.5 lakh so far this kharif season with cotton sown on about 48.77 lakh acres followed by paddy on 13.75 lakh acres, redgram 8.34 lakh acres, maize 5.18 lakh acres, soybean 3.39 lakh acres and greengram 1.21 lakh acres.
Meanwhile, the average rain recorded in the State was 3.1 mm against the normal of 7.3 mm during the 24-hour period till 8.30 am on Sunday with the highest of 48.5 mm recorded at a couple of places in Adilabad district. On Sunday, from 8.30 am to 7 pm, a highest rainfall of 20.8 mm was recorded at Kunoor in Jangaon district.
