Tirupati: The district agriculture department said on Thursday that it has completed a survey of crop damage in relation to last month's incessant rain and subsequent floods in Chittoor district and sent the report to the state government.
Heavy rains that lashed the district from November 18 to 20 affected all 66 mandals. The agriculture department submitted a report stating that different types of crops were damaged over a total extent of 11,368 hectares and some 36,295 farmers incurred substantial losses. The total crop loss here was put at Rs 17.29 crore.
According to the joint collector (revenue and Rythu Barosa) Raja Babu, teams of offficials visited all mandals for enumeration of crop loss. A detailed list of crop-wise damage has been prepared and approved by mandal-level agriculture officers and tahsildars. The lists were displayed at Rythu Barosa centres for social inspection.
According to the report, crops such as paddy, groundnut, ragi, sugarcane, red gram and maize etc were affected in large quantities. Paddy crop sown by 31,807 farmers on 9,795 hectares, groundnut by 1,187 farmers on 501 hectares, sugarcane by 196 farmers on 70 hectares, ragi by 441 farmers on 133 hectares, red gram by 66 farmers on 21 hectares, maize by 402 farmers on 166 hectares and other crops by 20 farmers on 6 hectares have been damaged.
The report said rains and floods inundated 440 hectares of farm lands belonging to 1,274 farmers and turned them into sand dunes. About 236 hectares of fields belonging to 236 farmers had seen land erosion.
All the 66 mandals were badly affected due to the rains. Officials have put the initial estimate of crop and infrastructure loss in the district at Rs 1,294 crore. About 489 villages were badly affected and flash floods inundated 126 of them. R&B roads had been damaged to an extent of 539km, while 321.74km of panchayati raj roads were destroyed. There was also damage to residences of the order of Rs 2.41 crore, involving 1,330 houses.
