Mahbubanagar: Unseasonal rains cause heavy losses to farmers

Mahbubanagar: Heavy rains lashed many parts of erstwhile Mahbubanagar district on Tuesday evening causing lots of hardships to the paddy, chilli and maize farmers.

In view of this the district administration authorities have alerted the agriculture and marketing departments to aid the farmers in the form of providing tarpaulins, and other necessary arrangements to protect the grains from getting damaged to the unprecedented rains.

According to the Metrological department, Mahabubnagar Urban, CC Kunta, Moosapet, Bhootpur, Gandeed and Moinabad mandals in Mahbubnagar district received an average rainfall of 16 millimetres on Tuesday evening. Particularly in CC Kunta, Moosapet, and the heavy rains caused huge damage to the paddy farmers who were drying their crop on the roads, agriculture platforms and at Market yards as large scale of paddy got wet and at some places even got washed away in the rainwater.

At some places in Bhootpur, the sanding paddy crop fell on the ground due to high-speed winds combined with hailstorm causing huge damage to the paddy, maize and mirchi farmers. In Nagarkurnool, Narayapet and Wanaparhty districts which are known for the mango crops, hundreds of farmers have expressed their displeasure as their mango plantations have been destroyed causing heavy loss. For instance, in Kollapur itself more than 22,000 acres of mango plantations have been destroyed. Kolapur produces high quality mangos which are exported to foreign countries. However, this year the farmers have faced losses as the yields have drastically fallen affected due to pests, on the top of this the unseasonal rains have caused all the more losses to the farmers.

The farmers of Narayanpet district also faced similar fate as heavy rains combined with thunder storms and high speed winds destroyed standing paddy crops in 100s of acres in the district. According to district Collector Koya Sriharsha, paddy and horticulture crops over an extent of 315.25 acres were damaged in the district.

As many as 273 farmers faced losses due to unseasonal rains. For which a crop damage compensation of Rs 31.56 lakh has been assessed and a report has been submitted to the government. Similar situation was also witnessed in Bomraspet mandal of Kodangal constituency where in thunder storms caused havoc to the standing paddy crops causing large scale damage to the paddy and maize crops.

In view of unseasonal rains, the district Collectors of Narayanpet, Mahbubanagar districts have alerted the agriculture and marketing department authorities to provide relief operations to the paddy farmers who have faced losses due to the untimely rains.

Mahbubanagar district Collector G Ravi Nayak directed the Agriculture and Marketing department officials to provide tarpaulins to farmers to cover their harvested paddy stocked at market yards. The officials were also instructed to visit the agriculture fields of the farmers and to provide a report on the extent of damage caused to the farmers due to the untimely rains.