By late August, the earth in Inagallu village of Bapatla district should be shimmering with the emerald green of young paddy shoots. Instead, Kommineni Srinivasa Rao walks across a vast expanse of hard, cracked soil where his plough refuses to bite. For Srinivasa Rao, who owns four acres of land and leases six others, the 2026 monsoon has been a harsh reality check. His days are now an anxious vigil under a cloudless sky, leaving him apprehensive about spending his last borrowed funds — a final gamble on a harvest that may never yield a single grain. Across Andhra Pradesh, Srinivasa Rao’s nightmare is repeating on a mass scale, turning a routine agricultural season into a desperate financial survival test because of water scarcity, shrinking or delayed crop coverage, and relentlessly rising cultivation costs.
For thousands of farming families across the State, the primary worry is no longer about which crop will fetch a good price in the market. Instead, the questions are whether they can plant anything at all? What crops can survive with dwindling water supply? Or whether their harvests will ever cover their mounting debts?
“If there are no rains, we cannot even plough the land properly. We ploughed once when there was some moisture, but the soil has dried up again [this Kharif season]. Everything has come to a standstill,” Srinivasa Rao says.
There is also a psychological dimension to the crisis, says Srinivasa Rao. Farming, he says, is a seasonal occupation built around hope. A farmer prepares the land in anticipation of rain and watches the sky while deciding whether to sow. When the monsoon behaves unpredictably, every decision becomes a gamble.
“We [farmers] keep waiting for the next rain before deciding what to do. We have to think about whether to sow, whether to spend more money and whether the crop will survive,” he says.
Dilemma of crop diversification
Caught between erratic weather and spiralling financial risks, farmers in the State face a harsh reality. Although the State government’s advice to switch from water-hungry paddy to drought-hardy crops sounds good on paper, it ignores the heavy debts and rigid system tied to traditional farming. For farmers accustomed to paddy cultivation, the decision is not so simple. Paddy is not merely another crop. It is a familiar agricultural system with established seed supply, cultivation practices, labour arrangements, procurement channels and marketing mechanisms. When farmers are asked to shift to red gram, black gram, green gram, castor, millets or other crops, they are effectively being asked to reorganise their entire agricultural plan.
In the dryland belt around Kottur mandal in the Bapatla district, where nearly 3,800 acres depend largely on rainfall, agriculture has virtually come to a halt. Tobacco, once an important commercial crop, has lost much of its attraction because of weak demand and market uncertainty. Chilli cultivation has shrunk to barely 100 to 150 acres, constrained by water scarcity and soaring input costs.
Farmers are now pinning their hopes on Bengal gram, which can still be sown in November or December, if the rains return. But even this represents a gamble. A delayed shift to an alternative crop can mean fresh expenditure on seed and land preparation, without any certainty over weather or prices.
Despite concerns over El Niño-driven dry spells and delayed monsoons in Andhra Pradesh, farm laborers transplant paddy saplings in waterlogged fields, while workers apply pesticide sprays to protect the vulnerable young crop.
| Photo Credit:
K.V.S Giri
Three-front climate crisis
The 2026 Kharif season is pushing Andhra Pradesh’s agricultural sector to its absolute limits. Agriculture supports nearly 62% of the state’s population, making rural livelihoods a primary focus for the administration, especially after the state recorded a massive foodgrain production of 237 lakh metric tonnes the previous year. However, El Niño conditions have severely disrupted the monsoon.
With an extreme 51% monsoon shortfall paralysing agriculture across the State, cultivators are forced to spend more money to keep failing crops alive. Without immediate financial relief and systemic support, rural communities are running out of both water and the financial capacity to wait for help.
Agriculture Director Dr. Manazir Jeelani Samoon says the broader crisis is reflected in Andhra Pradesh’s alarming rainfall situation, with El Niño conditions severely disrupting the 2026 Kharif monsoon.
“While the country as a whole recorded a 13% monsoon deficit between June 1 and August 25, Andhra Pradesh registered an extreme 51% rainfall shortfall,” Samoon says. “All 28 districts in the State are in deficit, with 25 classified as deficit and three as large-deficit.”
“The State has brought 20.35 lakh hectares under cultivation so far, compared with 25.63 lakh hectares during the corresponding period last year. However, this should not be seen merely as a decline in agricultural activity,” Samoon says, adding, “The cropping pattern reflects a planned, water-budgeted shift towards pulses and other drought-resilient crops in areas where paddy cultivation is not viable because of limited water availability.”
Consequently, sowing has lagged far behind normal levels. By August 19, according to former Andhra Pradesh State Agriculture Mission vice-chairman Y.V.S. Nagi Reddy, Kharif sowing covered only 18.9 lakh hectares, about 61% of the normal target of 30.84 lakh hectares. Major rain-fed crops like groundnut have been hit hardest, with sowing reaching only 34% of normal areas. Coverage for other staple crops stands at 62% for paddy, 70% for pulses, 75% for cotton, and 61% for maize.
The impact has been particularly severe in the rain-fed districts of Anantapur, Sri Sathya Sai, Kurnool, Nandyal, YSR Kadapa and Palnadu, where farmers who sowed after receiving early rains in June subsequently faced prolonged dry spells. In Kothapalli village of Krishna district, M. Venkateswara Rao points out that delayed canal releases have forced cultivators into a desperate, costly struggle. With canal supplies inadequate, farmers rely heavily on diesel-powered engines and motors to lift water.
Operating these pumps consumes between 10 and 15 litres of diesel per hour, sharply inflating cultivation costs. For tenant farmers, diesel expenses alone add roughly ₹15,000 to their seasonal burden. Furthermore, delayed water releases pushed paddy transplantation back by over 20 days, encouraging weed growth and forcing additional manual labour expenses.
Further north, in West Godavari district’s Mallavaram Lanka, tenant farmer Kavuru Srinivasa Rao watched his newly transplanted paddy rot within 10 days due to collar rot and root decay. Forced to clear the field and replant entirely, the second transplantation added an estimated ₹6,000 per acre, driving total seasonal expenses from ₹35,000 up to ₹45,000 per acre.
“We had to clear the field and transplant a second time,” he says.
The narrow window to replant has also pushed up labour costs. Farmers have complained of delays and technical difficulties in accessing fertilizers through digital distribution systems, forcing some to approach private dealers, where they allege prices are higher.
Agricultural workers spray pesticides over standing paddy fields to protect the young crop from pest infestations, amid concerns that El Niño-induced temperature shifts could increase crop vulnerability.
| Photo Credit:
K.V.S Giri
The burden on tenant farmers
For tenant farmers, there is little room to absorb such shocks. Without recognised documents proving cultivation rights, many find it difficult to access institutional credit, crop insurance and government compensation. Emergency expenditure on replanting, pesticide sprays and labour is therefore financed through informal loans carrying monthly interest rates of 2% to 3%.
This is why the present crisis is not merely about rainfall statistics or the area brought under cultivation. It is also about the cost of adaptation.
A farmer who does not sow paddy because of a water shortage may avoid one risk, but may still face another if alternative crops fail to receive adequate rainfall or do not fetch remunerative prices. A farmer who has already transplanted paddy may have no option but to spend more money pumping water. And one whose crop fails may have to invest again to remain in cultivation.
The Andhra Pradesh Tenant Farmers’ Association secretary Maganti Haribabu opines that the government should immediately declare drought-affected mandals and provide a comprehensive relief package. Sought a compensation of at least Rs.10,000 an acre for farmers and tenant cultivators who have suffered crop losses or have been unable to cultivate.
Nagi Reddy has gone a step further, calling for an “agricultural emergency”.
Farmers’ organisations have demanded emergency irrigation support, uninterrupted power for agricultural pumping, crop-loss assessment, loan relief, and expanded employment support for agricultural labourers. They have also raised a fundamental issue that has long remained unresolved in Andhra Pradesh agriculture.
While landowners may have documents, access to banks and eligibility for government schemes, the person actually cultivating the crop can remain invisible in official records. The association alleges that in several cases, actual cultivators are not being properly recorded in e-crop data, depriving them of insurance, compensation, institutional credit and other assistance.
For farmers like Srinivasa Rao in Bapatla, the immediate question is simple: When will it rain?
For tenant cultivators in Krishna, it is: When will water reach the fields?
And for farmers struggling to save replanted crops in West Godavari, the question is whether the crop will survive long enough to recover even a part of the money already spent.
The 2026 Kharif season is therefore becoming a season of hard choices. Farmers are being asked to use less water but often spend more, grow alternative crops but accept unfamiliar risks, and adapt to climate uncertainty while carrying the burden of old debts and new investments.
One farmer waits for rain, another for canal water and a third for a damaged crop to recover. But all are caught in the same cycle of uncertainty — water scarcity, rising costs and mounting debt.
As Andhra Pradesh waits for the monsoon to recover, its farmers are running out of something equally essential: the financial capacity to wait.