Impacts on cropland: 2019 Maharashtra Floods

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Flood-hit districts of Kolhapur, Sangli and Satara are leading agri-producers in Maharashtra. They are also the historic sugarcane growing regions of the state. Assured water availability and rich soils have made these regions prosperous cultivators of sugarcane, grapes, bananas, groundnuts and other oilseeds like soybeans and also vegetables.

August 2019 Floods in Upper Krishna basin in Maharashtra resulted in submergence of thousands of hectares of cropland in these districts for nearly a week. Sugarcane is a hardy crop and can withstand drought and floods remarkably. But even the hardy cane has suffered massive losses. Cane which was under water for over 5 days has wilted and caught fungus. According to the Sugar Commissionarate, sugarcane was planted over 1.52 lakh hectares in Kolhapur and 95, 827 hectares in Sangli. Almost 40% of this crop has suffered massive losses and this may bring down the sugar production in the state in 2019-20 substantially.

While some such ball-park figures are available for sugarcane, losses to other crops are not in public domain till now. Central NDMA team has visited these districts to assess flood losses and the State is supposedly urging to have separate criteria to asses losses to sugarcane and grapes. Let us hope that all farmers are equitably compensated.

As Abhay Kanvinde visited the regions to look at flood impacts, it is clear that crops like Bananas, Grapes, groundnut, soyabean, vegetables etc., have suffered.

Resilience of the farming community, some of whom have already started replanting, is simply astounding.