Late spell of rain stalls harvest, impacts crops

Farmers struggled to save their produce as continuous rains in parts of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab have flooded fields and soaked standing crops, leading to grain loss.

Heavy unseasonal rain in northern food-bowl states has stalled harvesting and damaged crops, while raising risks of pest attacks, cultivators and experts said on Friday.

Adequate harvests are critical this year amid a global food crisis.(Deepak Gupta/HT Photo)

Farmers struggled to save their produce as continuous rains in parts of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab have flooded fields and soaked standing crops, leading to grain loss.

Experts said a late revival of the monsoon has been a boon for eastern states where rains had been scanty and destructive in the north where harvesting has begun or is about to start.

A low pressure in the Bay of Bengal and a western disturbance, a rain-bearing system, have collided to give heavy rains at a time when the June-September monsoon normally begins to retreat.

The country witnessed an erratic monsoon this year. Rains skipped many paddy growing states, such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. A late revival has helped these states.

Adequate harvests are critical this year amid a global food crisis. India banned the export of wheat in May and then put curbs on rice shipments as extreme weather pummelled crops.

“Harvesting of paddy has come to a halt because combine harvesters cannot be operated in soft, wet soil. There will be considerable yield loss in paddy,” Rajinder Singh, a former agriculture officer with the Haryana government, said from Karnal.

The rains have delayed planting of vegetable crops and if hot dry weather follows, farmers may have to watch out for pest attacks, said Sanjay Sangroiya, a horticulture expert who formerly worked at the Centre of Excellence for Vegetables in Haryana’s Gharaunda.

There’s no immediate let-up in the weather. According to an official forecast Friday, Uttarakhand will receive “isolated heavy rainfall” during Sept 23-26. Western Uttar Pradesh will continue to be drenched till Sept 25, while eastern Rajasthan will get heavy rain on Sept 23-24.

In Uttar Pradesh, heavy rains have damaged paddy and pearl millet (bajra).

“Very heavy rainfall has resulted in crop losses in both central and western Uttar Pradesh,” said Sudhir Panwar, a Lucknow-based agriculture expert. Showers have inundated towns and farms in regions such as Agra, Mathura, Etawah, Kannauj and Meerut, he said.

Rajasthan, a large producer of spices and onion, has also received substantial rainfall, especially in eastern districts, damaging crops such as coarse cereals, said Ram Sevak Singh, a member of the Bharatiya Kisan Union in Alwar.

The rains, which are likely to continue over the weekend in northern states, effectively narrow the window available to farmers to harvest and clear their fields of paddy remnants. Officials from Punjab and Haryana, in a meeting held by the Centre on Sept 21, said that they expected a lower incidence of farm fires this year, which cause an annual spell of deadly pollution and smog over Delhi. However, delayed harvesting is likely to cause a spike in the intensity of stubble burning, as farmers will have less time to clear fields for their next crop, wheat.

Farmers usually plant rabi or winter-sown wheat in the second half of October and finish sowing by the second week of November. “The wheat sowing window lasts till about November 12-15,” said Paramjit Singh, a former faculty at the Punjab Agricultural University.