Droughts, water shortage: Here's why Marathwada isn't giving up Sugarcane

The acute water shortage compelled not just the Tandales but also a large number of Marathwada farmers to move away from sugarcane and cultivate tur

Shankar and Chandrakala Tandale vividly remember the summer of 2016. “We have three borewells and two wells on our farmland,” said Shankar, 52. “They had completely dried up. Even the queues for drinking water were longer than what they usually are in summer.”

The situation forced them to grow a different crop that year. On their farmland in Khamaswadi village in southern Maharashtra’s Osmanabad district, 10 acres of sugarcane had shrunk to two. “We replaced it with eight acres of tur,” said Chandrakala, 47. Sugarcane is a water-guzzler but tur, or pigeon pea, hardly needs any. “We did not have enough