Central team tours Gevrai and Beed talukas; 'Should I set fire to this cane now?' asks a farmer

Gevrai: A central team led by Muktanand Agrawal, joint secretary in the Union department of agriculture and farmers welfare, visited villages in Gevrai and Beed talukas on Friday, October 9, to see the drought in Beed district for itself. It began with fields around Jategaon Phata in Gevrai taluka. State agriculture secretary Parimal Singh, collector Vivek Johnson, zilla parishad chief executive officer Jitin Rahman and MLA Vijaysinh Pandit were among those present.

Around Ardhamasla and Ranmala, the team looked at cotton, sugarcane and mulberry crops. Farmers said the crops had stopped growing for lack of water and the scorched plants could not even be used as fodder. Looking at his dried-up sugarcane at Ardhamasla, farmer Suresh Narwade asked in despair whether he should now simply set fire to the crop.

A farmer in Gevrai said it had not rained since the first week of July and that, with his well dry, he was paying for tanker water to drink. Other farmers in the area said their sugarcane had burnt. At Pargaon Japti in Beed taluka, the team inspected a soybean crop.

At Nandura Haveli the team saw the dry bed of the Sindphana river and was told that storage in the Majalgaon dam had fallen to 26 per cent of the average. Local residents called for check dams to hold rainwater, groundwater recharge and the revival of silted-up wells.

Sources: Pudhari; Mahasamvad