Tamil Nadu is poised for a bumper harvest of foodgrains during the ongoing Samba cultivation season.
The reasons for the optimistic outlook are many. Among them are the higher coverage this time around when compared to the previous year, moderate rainfall during the northeast monsoon of 2019, extremely comfortable storage at reservoirs and a relatively pest attack-free cultivation season.
A senior official in the Agriculture Department said his department was hopeful of the foodgrain production touching at least 110 lakh tonnes.
It remains to be seen whether this year’s production could exceed the State’s performance in 2014-15, when it registered a record production figure of 127.95 lakh tonnes. At the time, paddy’s share was 79.49 lakh tonnes; millets – 40.79 lakh tonnes; and pulses – 7.67 lakh tonnes. Though there are still three months to go before the end of the current financial year, which is also the measuring period for agricultural production, this year’s coverage may eventually be lower than what was recorded during 2014-15. At the time, the total coverage of foodgrains was around 36 lakh hectares. This year’s figure is, as of now, 31.77 lakh hectares.
One of the key features of the current year is the situation of plenty when it comes to water. Thanks to bountiful rainfall in the catchments of the Cauvery and other major rivers during the southwest monsoon and moderate rainfall in the subsequent northeast monsoon, farmers did not have to struggle for water. Of course, there have been reports of water not reaching tail-end areas of the river systems.
The bottom line
Notwithstanding these reports, the bottom line is that there will not be a shortage of drinking water during the summer in many parts of the State. On Wednesday, the Mettur dam’s storage stood at 91.6 thousand million cubic feet (tmc ft), against a capacity of 93.47 tmc ft. Likewise, Bhavanisagar, which is next to Mettur in terms of capacity, remains virtually at full reservoir level. Its storage is hardly 400 million cubic feet short of its capacity of 32.8 tmc ft. The same holds good for the Parambikulam, which has a storage of 12.643 tmc ft against its capacity of 13.408 tmc ft.
A senior official of the Public Works Department said that given the storage at Mettur, the water release, scheduled on June 12 for the kuruvai season will, in all likelihood, happen this year — the first time in the last 9 years. In spite of a better situation overall with regard to water and rainfall, the Agriculture Department has pursued the enrolment of farmers under the crop insurance scheme. As of December 24, around 29.85 lakh hectares and 18.92 lakh farmers had been brought under the insurance cover, compared to 35.37 lakh hectares and 24 lakh farmers during the previous year.
