The Union government is now reviewing the agricultural sowing situation and looking at ways to help the farming community, according to the officials of the Karnataka department of agriculture. It is indicated that ragi has been sown on 0.71 lakh hectares against the target of 7.54 lakh. While sunflower against a target of 2.77 lakh has been sown on 0.78 lakh hectares, groundnut coverage has been a mere 2 lakh hectares against the targeted 7.05 lakh. This could reduce the food grain production by 25 to 30 per cent for the current year.
According to the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre as on July 30, the total sowing was 33.59 lakh hectares against 74.7 lakh hectares.
“Dry land crops like oil seeds and millets have already borne the brunt of deficient monsoon. It would be foolish to even state economic growth will not be affected. The drought is beginning to create catastrophic crisis which will trickle down to all aspects of the Indian economy,” observed KC Raghu, MD, Pristine Organics.
The University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) has estimated that the total production for the current year could be around 100 lakh tonnes as against 125 lakh tonnes in 2011-12.
Dr K Narayana Gowda, VC, University of Agricultural Sciences, said that food and fodder production could drop further if the rains failed in the coming weeks, it could be detrimental not just for the farming community but the consumers too as there could be a significant rise in prices of food grains by 40 per cent.
Area under coarse cereals, also used as animal feed is lagging behind in Karnataka and could impact fodder supply to livestock, thereby affecting production of dairy products and increasing prices.
The Karnataka Milk Federation has indicated that the prices of milk and milk products could increase. “All that can be said is that the present drought condition is not good for the dairy industry,” stated Dr M N Venkataramu, MD, KMF.
The reports by the Indian Metrological Department indicate that rainfall would be deficient in the second half of the monsoon too.
South interior Karnataka and north interior Karnataka along with the coastal regions are among the 17 areas in the country which have received deficient rainfall.
According to the Institute of Economic and Social Change, Bengaluru, the scarcity of animal feed looms large in a drought-parched India which could be a serious hurdle for economic growth. India's first drought in three years will cut output of some coarse grains used for animal fodder apart from other food grains.
