Crops Damaged due to Heavy Rainfall, Hailstorm in North India

Heavy rainfall and hailstorms in north-west India last week have damaged the oilseeds and other perishable crops, mainly potatoes, cauliflower and peas in the region. But the main rabi crop wheat may have scraped through the stormy weather.

While the rainfall will help reduce the cost of irrigation for the wheat crop, they are set to affect the yield of oilseeds. A senior official of the Haryana agriculture department said, “Mustard is affected by heavy rainfall as well as strong breeze in several districts”. As a result, growers of potato, peas and cauliflower have experienced huge losses as their crops were badly affected by the hailstorm.

While mustard crop was affected in Haryana, the sudden rainfall has damaged the potato crop in Punjab. Meanwhile, wheat is likely to gain from the rainfall, though there could be a minor yield loss in hailstorm-affected regions. An official of Punjab’s agriculture department said as the wheat crop had not achieved height, the storm and rain could not affect it. He added that “But hailstorm has affected all the crops.” Officials have alerted the growers about the risk of yellow rust that generally dwells in wet climate.

Hailstorm and strong breeze have caused damage in the districts of Hisar, Sirsa, Mahendergarh, Bhiwani Kaithal, Palwal and Gurugram in Haryana. Therefore the state government has decided to conduct a review of damage to the crops. On the other hand, in Punjab, preliminary reports indicate crop losses in Ludhiana, Patiala, Fatehgarh Sahib, Mohali, Hoshiarpur and Ferozepur.

KS Pannu, Punjab’s principal secretary of agriculture said, “There are preliminary reports of damage to crops, mainly the perishable ones, but it will take a few days for the evaluation of the extent of loss”. The state government in Punjab has announced a survey to evaluate the losses, in order to start a process to provide compensation to the farmers affected by it.