For vegetable growers near Kailash Mandir and the Hathikhana area of Ambala Cantt, this season has turned into a fight just to break even. Relentless sunshine, scant rainfall and hot winds have scorched crops so badly that even though the fields still look green, the actual yield has fallen far short of what farmers expected. Growers say this year's weather has hit vegetable cultivation particularly hard, and there is little sign of relief in the days ahead.
Arbi crop takes the biggest hit
Farmers say that in a normal year, the arbi (colocasia) crop is fully ready by July, but this time the intense heat wilted the plants well before that. In several fields, arbi leaves have turned yellow and the plants have simply stopped growing taller. The damage has not stopped at arbi either; chilli crops nearby have also suffered from the same dry spell. Persistent moisture loss in the soil, combined with the constant hot winds, has affected root growth and thrown off the entire yield calculation for the season.
Babu Ram's four decades in the soil
Babu Ram, who has been growing vegetables in the area for close to forty years, says he has spent his whole life working this same land. He grows arbi, spinach, bottle gourd, ridge gourd, chilli and okra, all using traditional methods with cow dung manure. As he put it,
the sun was so intense this time that the arbi crop was almost completely wiped out.Babu Ram planted a mix of vegetables across roughly four bighas of land, and his spending on seeds, fertiliser, labour and irrigation kept climbing through the season. He now fears the yield has dropped so much that recovering his costs before the produce even reaches the market will be a struggle, which is why he is now asking the government for compensation.
Sanjay Kumar's ridge gourd vines keep losing their flowers
In farmer Sanjay Kumar's field, the ridge gourd vines still look green, but strong winds keep knocking the flowers off before they can set, disrupting the whole process of fruit formation. Ridge gourd normally takes about a month to mature, and the crop cycle runs close to three months. Right now, the field is producing between 12 and 15 kilograms of ridge gourd a day for the market, but that is well below what it used to yield. Sanjay says he has already spent around 50,000 rupees on cultivation this season. His chilli and arbi crops are almost entirely ruined, while okra and ridge gourd remain entirely at the mercy of the weather.
Hope in every cloud, but fear of a downpour too
Sanjay says every cloud in the sky now brings a flicker of hope, but also a fresh worry, because if a sudden heavy downpour arrives, whatever little crop remains could be damaged all over again. Farmers in the area are effectively caught between two extremes: unrelenting heat that offers no relief, and the looming risk of excess rain that could finish off what little is left. The volatile weather has left small farmers in the region questioning their income and their plans for the rest of the season, and for now, most of them simply hope to recover the money they have already put into the ground.
