As farmers across Odisha are worried over the heavy unseasonal rain during the paddy harvesting period, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today asked officials to keep a vigil on the situation and help peasants to overcome the crisis.
Patnaik asked the departments to rush field staff to areas where heavy rain continued to lash.
He was presiding over a hurriedly convened meeting on the consequence of the low pressure induced downpour on standing paddy crop ready to be harvested.
The chief minister also asked the officials to ensure that farmers get the minimum support price for their paddy during procurement.
Agriculture department officials said farmers have been advised to sprinkle salt water on the standing crop in order to resist fall of grain from plants.
Of the 59.95 lakh hectare under kharif cultivation, paddy plant was grown on over 36.26 lakh hectare, they said.
The farmers are badly hit as the kharif crop has been badly hit both by drought due to deficient rainfall in monsoon, subsequent pest attack and now the unseasonal rain.
Meanwhile, the well-marked low pressure over southwest Bay of Bengal, has intensified into depression and lay centred at about 380 km from south-southwest of Gopalpur, said S Sahu, the director of IMD, Bhubaneswar.
He said the system will further move in north-north east direction and the coastal parts of Odisha will receive heavy rainfall till tomorrow evening.
The IMD forecast has made farmers, who have already suffered crop loss due to pest attacks, a worried lot. Though the agriculture department has asked the peasants to shift their paddy to safer places, many of them rued that their standing crops were not ready for harvest.
"We could not reap our crops as they are not harvest-ready. Heavy rain may caused irreparable damage to our paddy," said Narayan Samal, a farmer in Kendrapara district.
Ganjam, Khurda, Cuttack, Puri, Nayagarh, Gajapati, Rayagada and Kandhamal districts are some of the districts that are likely to experience heavy rainfall till November 17, the MeT department said.
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