In Pictures: Crops Ruined by Unseasonal Rains

In pictures: Crops across India ruined by unseasonal rains.

Lives and livelihoods across India’s agricultural lands hinge on rain or the lack of it. This year however, unseasonal rains in March have destroyed crops, farmers and livelihoods across the country.

In Uttar Pradesh’s Sisola Khurd wheat crops have been damaged by unseasonal rain. As much as 50% of the wheat crop has in fact been damaged in the state, according to a report in the Times of India.

The situation is so dire that the Indian government has had to import 80,000 tonnes of Australian wheat in the last week. On average, India imports not more than 10,000 tonnes of the same wheat a year.

Ranvir Singh who runs a sugarcane farm in Sisola Khurd, UP also lost his crop. The state has been the worst with over 27 lakh hectares of farms affected, as reported by NDTV. Wheat, mustard, sugarcane and mango orchards have been destroyed.

Four farmers have committed suicide due to the horrific turn of events. A 42-year-old farmer Mahipal died of shock and cardiac arrest after seeing the destruction of his crop in Lodholi village in Barsana, UP.

Wheat farms have been hit the worst, especially in states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. In Madhya Pradesh, where 4 lakh hectares of wheat, rabi and mustard were destroyed across 4000 villages, five farmers committed suicide in the second half of March, according to a report by CNN-IBN.

It’s not just wheat farms but rice fields too that have been devastated. In Nandigram, West Bengal, vast stretches of cropland stand empty. More than 50,000 hectares of mostly rice paddy were destroyed.

Even the fertile lands of Punjab have not been spared. In March alone, about one million tonnes of rice were damaged. The Punjab government says around three lakh hectares with mostly paddy, wheat, mustard and potato crops have been affected, NDTV reported.

Rajasthan suffered immense loss to human life, livestock, crops and property due to unseasonal hailstorms. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who visited the state, has promised relief. Farmers have also been promised compensation by the Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje.

North-western Maharashtra has also been affected. According to Rohit Pandhare, an agro-businessman from the region, the damage could be as high as 30% of the total crop.

Nashik has over 1.5 lakh acres of grape farms and with another 50 thousand acres under cultivation in neighbouring Sangli, the rain could affect the lives of several hundreds more, as reported by Quint.

All this has meant that farmers have not been able to rally against the Land Acquisition Bill. Those protests have largely been organised by farmer unions, opposition parties and activists.