Damage to groundnut crop in 11 lakh acres in Anantapur district due to excess rainfall till October-end will be the main topic at the District Review Committee meeting scheduled on Monday. The meeting is being held after a long gap due to the COVID pandemic.
While good rainfall raised hopes initially, excess rain later led to vegetative growth and the yield fell abysmally low to three to four bags per acre compared to an average yield of 10 bags. Heated debate and demand for better compensation is likely to be witnessed at the meeting and it might pass a resolution seeking a change in policy for compensation taking village as a unit.
Currently, the production cost per acre is above ₹15,000 and with the low yield, farmers could get just ₹3,000 per acre on an average where groundnut crop suffered damage, but the policy allows only ₹6,000 per acre compensation, which is very low according to farmers and many MLAs, who are likely to raise this issue.
Drip irrigation
If groundnut and cotton crops are the visible losses on a large scale, horticulture crops too suffered very badly and would be a point for heated discussion. With subsidy on drip irrigation and sprinkler systems not yet finalised, a demand on that issue too may crop up. While so much of damage has occurred, no proper e-cropping and crop-cutting experiment has been done in the district to come to correct conclusion on the quantum of loss.
If that is the position in kharif season, except distribution of some red gram seeds, nothing has been properly planned for the rabi season by the district officials and that may also draw flak from the people’s representatives.
Focus, however, needs to be on damaged roads in most of the urban areas and interlinking State highways, which need urgent repairs. Unless the road repairs are taken up, accidents cannot be curbed. Botch Satyanarayana, the in-charge Minister, will chair the meeting.
