<p><em>Monsoon may have brought heavy rains elsewhere in the country, but cotton and soyabean farmers in Haldola face zero crop this season if there is no rain in the next ten days. <strong>Text by CH Unnikrishnan</strong> and <strong>photos by Umesh Goswami</strong></em><br><br>Even as the state government of Maharashtra claimed in June that 70 per cent of sowing in the state's total 142 hectares of farm land marked for Kharif planting is complete after a promising start of monsoon, the key Marathwada region is already under the fear of an imminent drought.<br><br><img alt="" src="http://bw-image.s3.amazonaws.com/Farmer8.jpg" style="width: 650px; height: 384px; margin: 1px;"><br><br>Hundreds of cotton and soyabean farmers at Haldola village in Jalna near Aurngabad have already seen the saplings shrunk to half the size as there weren’t enough rain after the first few in June. <br><br>“If the rain doesn’t come in another ten days, all these plants will die,” says Girdhari Matre, a cotton farmer in Haldola village.<br><br>As the state claimed, sawing of Kharif crops including cotton and soyabean is almost complete in Haldola, where most of the farmers are small and unorganised with a maximum farm land of 1.5 to 2 acres in possession.<br><br>With no alternative source of irrigation, these farmers are fully dependent on rain in all the sowing seasons and have been under distress with repeated crop failures due to poor monsoon..<br><br><img alt="" src="http://bw-image.s3.amazonaws.com/Farmer14.jpg" style="width: 650px; height: 384px; margin: 1px;"><br><br>Farmers in Haldola village told BW that most of them sowed in maximum area this time as there were signs of a good monsoon at the beginning. But, the situation is already worse with hardly any rain afterwards.<br><br>Maharashtra agriculture minister Eknath Khadse had said in June that sowing of crops in Maharashtra has increased nearly 64 per cent in this season on the back of healthy rains across the state.<br><br>“We took loans from private lenders at a rate which is as high as 48 per cent (upto 4 per cent monthly) to have maximum sowing,” says Kailash Narasahib Matre, whose family jointly owns some 18 acres of farm land for Kharif crops in Haldol.<br><br>Haldola farmers, mostly grow BT cotton and hybrid soyabean as it is the case in most part of Jalna and Aurangabad districts, also said banks have almost stopped fresh lending as earlier loans are still unpaid due to bad crops in the last few seasons due to poor monsoon. . <br><br><img alt="" src="http://bw-image.s3.amazonaws.com/Farmer15.jpg" style="width: 650px; height: 384px; margin: 1px;"><br><br><br>Most of the farmers, who have been now depending on their children's paltry income earned through unskilled jobs at the nearby industrial units in Aurangabad industrial zones and others, say their livelihood from the traditional farming is no more a dependable option and the mounting loan liabilities lead them to more distress.<br><br>Though the state government have had "introduced" several farmer friendly schemes including farm subsidies, loan restructuring etc, the actual beneficiaries are often large scale farmers and the middlemen.<br><br><img alt="" src="http://bw-image.s3.amazonaws.com/Farmer13.jpg" style="width: 650px; height: 384px; margin: 1px;"><br><br>Although the state government is now planning to device modern technologies such as cloud seeding etc., to overcome poor monsoon, many question the practicality and real outcome of such projects.</p>
