Praful Senjalia, president of the Bhartiya Kisan Sangh, is busy sowing sesame. Sowing is on in full swing following moderate to heavy rains in Saurashtra over the last one week. The crops, however, are different this season.

A prominent farmer from Amreli district, Senjalia is not sowing groundnut this time, which is the main crop in Saurashtra. Since the rains are too late for groundnut cultivation, farmers have little choice but to go for a change in crop pattern—less groundnut and more pulses, sesame and soyabean. The other major crop, cotton, can still be grown. All these alternative crops will take around three months to grow.

“Groundnut cannot be cultivated now. We have to forget the main crop this season,” said Senjalia.

This is the story of most of the farmers in Saurashtra, which is known as the groundnut bowl of India with an average production of 13 lakh tonnes. The delayed and scanty rains have forced farmers to go for crops that require less water and time to grow.

Barring Junagadh and Jamnagar, groundnut has hardly been sown in other districts of Saurashtra including Rajkot, Amreli, Porbandar, Bhavnagar and Surendranagar. Of the total groundnut cultivation area of 12 lakh hectors in the state, sowing of groundnut has been done in 2 lakh hectors in Junagadh and 60,000 hectors in Jamnagar. Groundnut cultivation has been negligible in other districts so far.

“Groundnut requires a period of 120 days to grow. The sowing should ideally be done by June end. But since there have been scanty rains even in the second week of July, pulses are the ideal choice for farmers,” said N C Patel, Vice-Chancellor, Junagadh Agriculture University.

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