Thanks to timely rains, crop area doubles in Chittoor district
Joint Director (Agriculture) Vijaya Kumar
Tirupati: Thanks to the timely and excess rainfall this year the crop area in Chittoor district in the current kharif season doubled compared to last year.
This year in June and July the district received more than the normal rainfall triggering the crop area going up, except sugarcane, the crop area of other crops including paddy, coarse grams, pulses and oilseeds more than normal.
According to official sources, the total crop area covered under various crops as on July third week this year was 1,52,042 hectares as against 77,656 hectare last year. With regard to paddy, the crop area this year in the current season was 11,418 hectare against 3,857 last year.
The crop area of coarse grams including jowar, bazra, maize, Rahi, Samai and Korra was sown in an area of 6,228 hectare this year whereas it was 1,974 hectare last year.
With regard to pulses including horse gram, green gram, black gram, red gram, cow gram and anumulu the crop area reached 9,832 hectares this kharif against 3,200 hectares last year.
Groundnut which is the major crop for the district where farmers mostly depend on rainfed crops was sown in 1,10,457 hectare while it was only 54,529 hectare last year.
Overall, the position of crops taken up after the rains in June and July in the district is satisfactory, said Joint Director (Agriculture) Vijaya Kumar attributing the good crop position to timely and adequate rains in the crucial June and July months for kharif crop season.
He said this year the groundnut crop was 107 per cent more than the targeted and normal crea and would go up further by the end of this month.
After a gap of 4-5 years the district received timely rains, he said exuding hope that this year production including food grains and oil seeds will be more which is sure to bring cheers to district farmers.
It may be noted here that the rainfall in June was 37 per cent more than the normal rainfall and in July also the district received 223 per cent more than normal rainfall in other words excess rainfall proving a blessing in the form of rains to farmers.