By IANS,
Gandhinagar : With the monsoon delayed by nearly a fortnight, farmers in the central and northern regions of Gujarat have delayed sowing of cotton and groundnut crops.
“There is hardly any pre-monsoon activity in the central and northern regions, particularly in Mehsana and Ahmedabad districts, where sowing for cotton and groundnut could have started a fortnight earlier,” said an agriculture department official.
He said that sowing has been carried out so far in barely 436,000 hectares out of 8.6 million hectares of farmland in the state and a further delay of a week in rainfall could severely affect the crop this year.
“But farmers in most of Saurashtra region are preparing to sow groundnut seeds as areas like Amreli, Rajkot and Junagadh have received heavy rainfall in the past week,” he added.
In virtually all districts of Gujarat, barring some in the Saurashtra region, the sowing has been below 24,000 hectares. The maximum sowing so far had been carried out in Surendranagar district with 72,000 hectares followed by Rajkot at 50,700 hectares.
Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who called a meeting of Met department and agricultural officials last week, has asked for the preparation of a contingency plan to meet the situation arising out of scanty rainfall.