What problem are the farmers of Sehore District in MP facing?

Standing in ankle-deep water engulfing his field, Kamal Singh Dhangar takes a wild shot at the likely yield from the soyabean crop that practically lies in ruins behind him. "One bag, two bags with difficulty,” notes the 58-year old with a wry smile, minutes after a fresh spell of rains has lashed Guradiya Sirajuddin village in Ashta tehsil of Madhya Pradesh’s (MP) Sehore district. While the same three-acre plot had given nearly 16 quintals of soyabean last year, Dhangar this time isn’t sure he can even afford labourers to harvest the negligible produce staring in his face.

He draws solace only from his not being alone. Most farmers in Guradiya Sirajuddin as well as neighbouring villages have reported widespread damage to their already matured standing crop.

Gulab Singh, who owns 10 acres not far from Dhangar’s field, is ruing his decision to have taken an additional six acres of land on lease for cultivating soyabean and wheat this year. “I have paid the owner Rs 1.5 lakh. By now, this soyabean crop should have been ready for taking to Ashta mandi (agriculture produce market at the tehsil town, about 10 km away). But my expensive pursuit has proved costly,” Downloaded from cracku.in remarks the 60-year-old, who, too, cannot enter his field without wading through water almost touching the knees.

Seated at the edge of his flooded field a few hundred meters away, Dev Singh, a sprightly octogenarian, cannot remember the year when the monsoon rains caused such late-stage havoc. “I may have been this big,” he says, pointing to a man many decades younger to him. Western MP, in which Sehore falls, has received 1,335.4 mm of average rainfall from 1 June 1 to 25 September, 58% more than the region’s historical normal of 845.3 mm for this period. However, the real story lies in the month-wise figures. In June, the opening month of the southwest monsoon season, the rains were actually 25.6% below the long-period average. In July, they were 31.2% above average. That surplus rose to 63.6% in August, while a whopping 158% more so far till September, confirming Dev Singh’s observation. Worse, there’s little respite, with more rains predicted over the next few days.

The monsoon has taken its toll mainly on soyabean. According to the Union agriculture ministry’s data, a total area of 113.449 lakh hectares (lh) has been planted under this leguminous oilseed in the current kharif season, with the bulk of it accounted for by MP (55.16 lh), Maharashtra (39.595 lh) and Rajasthan (10.608 lh). Within MP, the main soyabean growing districts are Ujjain, Dewas, Indore, Dhar, Ratlam, Mandsaur, Rajgarh, Shajapur, Sehore and Vidisha. The crop in low-lying areas is the one that has been worst affected. “Farmers who had sown early-maturity (80-90 days duration) varieties such as JS 9560 and JS 2034 just after mid-June will take the biggest hit. Their crop would already have matured; the longer it remains in the field, the more the chances of the grain rotting. Also, these farmers will not be able to save this grain for using as seed next year,” admits V S Bhatia, director of the Indian Institute of Soyabean Research at Indore.