Helen wipes out farmers’ hopes

Rajahmundry: Farmers of Konaseema are in deep distress as ‘Helen’ wiped out their hopes when they were preparing to harvest crops like paddy, coconut and banana plantations. While paddy is cultivated in about 1.3 acres in 16 mandals, coconut plants are raised in 1.24 lakh acres and banana in 20,000 acres. Coco is being raised as inter-crop in 15,000 acres. Of the more than one crore coconut trees in the region, a large number running into lakhs in the coastal mandals were uprooted.

Crowns of the trees were shaken by heavy winds. Since repairing the damaged crown is costly and cumbersome farmers are seeking compensation for partial damage of coconut trees. Each coconut grower will lose up to Rs 16,000 for each tree when crowns are damaged, as it is not possible to extract nuts at least immediately. Addala Gopalakrishna, founder of Rythumithra Rural Technology Park, observes that it is not feasible to use manpower as its costs more than a farmer could get by extracting coconuts. He mentions that a farmer can get only Rs 7,000 per acre, while harvesting manually costs about Rs 8,000. In the past farmers used to go in for plantation by June-end, after irrigation water was released from May 15. Now, they are opting for July-end.

With fear of natural calamities in early November, water is being released from June 15. With late plantation, harvesting is being delayed to the last week of November.But with nature changing its time-table, calamites are not sparing farmers even in November last week.

Farmers are demanding implementation of the Bhupendra Singh Huda committee in connection with the payment of input subsidy. M M Prabhakar Rao, authorized spokesperson of the Konaseema Rythu Parirakshna Samiti, has demanded for the implementation of the committee report which recommended payment of input subsidy of Rs 10,000 per acre in case of total crop damage. He faulted the government for paying only Rs 4,000 as subsidy.

Regarding compensation for a coconut tree, he said Rs 500 was not sufficient even to lift a fallen tree. He demanded payment o f Rs 3,000.