India’s farmers are grappling with a multitude of issues, ranging from crop failures, financial crisis, and stagnation in production to climate change. Here’s a quick look at just how one of these factors – unseasonal rains in the last three years alone has affected the agriculture sector and foodgrain production.
In the last three years instances of unseasonal rainfall has increased and impacted more and more states. There has been an over 200% increase in the crops damaged due this spike in instances of unseasonal rain and hailstorms between 2014 and 2015.
The economic damage of this crop loss has risen sharply from about 500 crores in 2013 to over 20,000 crores in 2015.
March 2015 was the wettest March in 48 years. The average rainfall for the whole of March was 61.1 mm, nearly double the normal. Some of the states recorded more than 1000% more rain than usual.
Uttar Pradesh was the worst affected due to these unseasonal rains in 2015, followed by Rajasthan and Haryana.
Wheat was the worst affected crop, followed by pulses and oilseeds.
Source of the Data: Lived Anomaly, Centre for Science and Environment
