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| Karnataka tur output may fall 50% |
| Rashmi Shrikant / Bangalore Sep 09, 2009, 00:00 IST |
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Crop in the tur bowl of the state has been hit by late monsoon and now heavy rain.
First, the monsoon played truant and arrived late. This delayed sowing. Then came a prolonged dry spell for one-and-half months due to which crops dried up. And now, it is heavy rain destroying the crop.
It couldn't have been worse for tur growers of Gulbarga, the district in the north-eastern part of Karnataka that produces one-tenth of the country's total tur output. Production of tur dal this year in the state is set to fall as much as 50 per cent. The situation was almost the same last year, when sowing declined 30 per cent and output tanked 35-40 per cent.
Normally, India sows tur on 3.5 million hectares, of which Karnataka accounts for 550,000 hectares. Of the 2.5 million tonnes (MT) of annual production of tur dal in India, 300,000 tonnes comes from Karnataka, mainly from Gulbarga, known as the ‘Tur Bowl’ of India. Last year, state’s output fell to about 200,000 tonnes and this year, it is feared that output would be as low as 150,000 tonnes.
While tur dal prices are skyrocketing and have been hovering in the range of Rs 75-95 a kg, th ere seems to be no end in sight to miseries of the tur-growing farmers of Gulbarga, and the neighbouring districts of Bidar and Raichur, due to the low output and a minimum support price (MSP) that does not even cover the cost of cultivation.
“A farmer spends about Rs 3,600 to grow about one quintal of tur. Till 2007-08, for many years, the MSP for tur was around Rs 1,300 a quintal. It was only last year that the MSP was raised to Rs 2,000 a quintal. To cover the cost of production and benefit farmers, MSP should be immediately raised to Rs 5,000-6,000,” said Basavaraj Ingin, State president, Karnataka Pradesh Red Gram Growers Association.
When rainfall revived on August 22, farmers were hopeful of resuming the sowing. However, such attempts faltered as heavy rains did not permit sowing and did not help much in saving the standing crop.
Now, the sowing season is over as tur is only a kharif crop. “We need technology for growing it as rabi crop as well,” said Guruprasad, a farmer from Gulbarga. According to the farming community, the need of the hour is to develop drought-resistant and pest-resistant tur seeds. Every year, about 50 per cent of the crops are hit by pest menace. “We have to spend Rs 2000 per acre for pest control, which is simply not affordable,” said Guruprasad.
Farmers are also looking to seeds that can yield crop in a short duration of, say, three months, while the existing seeds are long duration ones spanning across 6-7 months.
Since tur and other pulses are the only cash crops that can be grown in the rain-fed areas of north-interior Karnataka, farmers have no other way but to continue cultivating it despite incurring losses year after year.
Around 95 per cent of the tur area in Karnataka is rain-fed. And there is no safeguard system in place to face rain uncertainties. Farmers insist on proper mechanism to drain out water from fields during heavy rain. There has been a long pending demand for “one lake in each village”, which will help irrigating fields in the rain deficiency period.
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