Adilabad District

Adilabad District is a district in the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh, India. It has a total land area of 1,610,500 hectares, of which 689,500 hectares (42.8%) are forested and 551,600 ha are cultivated with field crops (34.3%). In 2011, Adilabad had a population of 2,737,738. At that time, 71.22% of males and 51.99% of females were literate.

Climate
Adilabad receives approximately 1053mm rainfall per year, mostly during the SW monsoon, between the second week of June and the third week of October.

Agriculture in Adilabad
A total of 551,600 hectares are cultivated, and of them, 38,300 are sown more than once during the year. The gross cropped area is therefore 589,900 hectares. Only 88,100 hectares are irrigated (16% of cropland), mostly via tube wells and filter points. 49.5% of gross cropland is sown in rainfed cotton. Other major crops are soybeans (20% of cropland), pulses like red gram and bengal gram (together, 15.1% of cropland), and grains (rice, 5.2%; sorghum, 8%; wheat, 0.7%). Together, all grains account for 13.9% of the gross area sown. Yields of the top two cash crops are low compared to the rest of the nation: 350 kg/ha for cotton and 595 kg/ha for soybeans.

Fruits, vegetables, and spices are grown on an additional 92,900 ha. Of this land, over half is in mangoes (54,000 ha) and the rest is oranges, tomatoes, chillies, eggplant, cabbage, okra, turmeric, and coriander.

Farmer Suicides
Although there is no district-level data available, available evidence, "particularly from an alert socially conscious print media in the country," points to "certain pockets within each of these states... where farm suicides are concentrated and where the problem would be very, very acute. The Vidarbha region in Maharashtra, Deccan and Hyderabad Karnataka regions in Karnataka, Telangana and Rayalaseema regions in Andhra Pradesh seem to be the ones – along with Wayanad in Kerala – have received a great deal of attention and coverage by the press on this issue... Now these sub-regions within these states – i.e., Vidharbha, Deccan and Hyderabad Karnataka, Telangana and Rayalaseema and Chhattisgarh – in fact do constitute a contiguous region in the heartland of India as it were." The area is a "semi-arid, poor, backward region in the heartland of India" and it appears that this is likely where the farm suicide issue is most severe.

Related Sourcewatch articles

 * Agriculture in India
 * India's New Economic Policy of 1991
 * Indian Fertilizer Subsidies
 * Indian Farmer Suicides

External Resources

 * Adilabad Agriculture
 * Andhra Pradesh Crop Statistics

External Articles

 * S. Harpal Singh, "Bt cotton proves ‘deadly' for farmers," The Hindu, May 5, 2012.
 * "Adilabad cotton growers benefit from sustainable farming," Business Standard, October 25, 2010.