The double whammy of scanty rainfall during the monsoon in about 50 districts and now widespread excessive rain and floods post-monsoon has left farmers in Uttar Pradesh with massive crop losses, people aware of the situation said.

The latest spell of rain, which continued for more than a week across Uttar Pradesh, is said to have widely damaged standing crops like paddy, maize, pulses, oilseeds and potato as fields were submerged.

“The drought during monsoon delayed plantation of paddy already causing losses and now unprecedented rainfall in October has flattened standing paddy and other crops,” said Mahesh Verma, a small farmer of Lakhimpur village in Kasganj district.

“The government must make a fair assessment of losses suffered by farmers due to drought earlier and because of heavy rain and floods now to compensate them,” he demanded.

While the government agencies are still busy calculating the losses suffered by farmers due to the drought-like situation earlier, heavy rainfall in October has upset all their loss assessments.

“Our field survey indicated that the paddy production might drop up to 20% due to drought and we were preparing reports accordingly to seek financial assistance from the Centre to compensate affected farmers,” a senior agriculture department official said.

“But, now we feel the losses due to heavy rain may be much higher,” he added.

Additional chief secretary (agriculture) Devesh Chaturvedi said assessment of crop damage due to scanty rainfall was still being finalized when the heavy rain and floods also started wreaking havoc.

“It appears that impact of rain and floods on the crops may be even higher than that of drought,” he added.

He said chief minster Yogi Adityanath on Wednesday ordered field survey by agriculture and revenue departments to assess crop losses suffered by farmers due to rain and floods.

“Now, we will send a composite report on losses due to both drought and excessive rainfall to the Centre,” Chaturvedi said.

Source - https://www.hindustantimes.com