Dry Bundelkhand gets rain bounty, acreage up by 5% to 1.1 mn hectares

The total kharif crop acreage in UP now stands at more than 9 Mn Ha, including 6 Mn Ha of paddy and 1.7 Mn Ha of pulses

Bountiful rainfall in arid Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh has not only ended the drought spell of previous years but has also translated into the kharif acreage rising by almost 50,000 hectares this year.

The area under different kharif (summer) crops across 7 Bundelkhand districts has been estimated at almost 1.1 million hectares (MH) in 2018 compared to 1.05 MH in 2017, thus rising by 5 per cent, owing to a good monsoon and government’s sustained efforts to increase acreage.

Bundelkhand comprises Lalitpur, Jhansi, Jaluan, Hamirpur, Mahoba, Banda and Chitrakoot districts. The adjacent districts of Madhya Pradesh also constitute the larger Bundelkhand region.

While the region had been witnessing rain deficits over the past couple of years, Bundelkhand received a good amount of downpour this season, which even resulted in flood situations in areas such as Mahoba and Jhansi. Jhansi, for instance, has received 1,578 mm of rainfall, almost double compared to the normal downpour of 822 mm during the entire monsoon season stretching from June to October. With a couple of weeks more to go before monsoon finally retreats, the region could witness more rainfall, thus increasing the rainfall table further.

UP agriculture minister Surya Pratap Shahi told Business Standard that ample rainfall had provided relief to farmers. However, the state government was ready with its contingency plan to counter any drought, since rains had been weak at the beginning of the season before gaining strength in late July and August.

“Bundelkhand has witnessed higher acreage in pulses, including moong and urad, apart from groundnut and millets, such as jowar and bajra,” Shahi added.

In fact, Yogi Adityanath government is targetting to increase the crop area in Bundelkhand to 1.62 MH by 2022 with a view to double farmers' income. Besides, the state is targetting construction of 5,000 ponds in 2018-19, of which 2,500 had already been developed for surface water storage and replenishing groundwater. In 2016-17 and 2017-18, 2,000 and 2,549 ponds were developed in Bundelkhand.

Meanwhile, monsoon has been plentiful in other UP regions as well with the state receiving almost 92 per cent of normal downpour compared to an aggregate rainfall of 80 per cent last year, UP MeT office director J P Gupta said.

The total kharif crop acreage in UP now stands at more than 9 MH, including 6 MH of paddy and 1.7 MH of pulses, Shahi informed.

Meanwhile, under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), over 2.78 million farmers had been provided kharif crop insurance cover of Rs 91 billion so far compared to 2.56 million beneficiaries in 2017. Last year, the government had distributed more than Rs 2.32 billion among 388,000 farmers as compensation for crop loss.

PMFBY also covers rabi (winter) crops and during the 2018-19 season, 2.8 million farmers were given insurance cover to the tune of Rs 115 billion, while 174,000 farmers were later disbursed Rs 1.17 billion in crop loss compensation.

Besides, the state is collaborating with Telangana for exchanging seeds and learning from their experiences of farming in arid zones. “Telangana has agro-climatic conditions like Bundelkhand and we would collaborate with them in this regard,” Shahi said.