Andhra Pradesh farmers are caught between climate uncertainty and financial risk

Amid severe El Niño-induced monsoon deficits and looming drought, farmers in Andhra Pradesh are resorting to laying temporary PVC pipes across dry fields to tap distant groundwater and irrigate land before sowing. | Photo credit: KVS Giri

By late August, the ground at Inagallu village in Bapatla district should be shimmering with the emerald green of young rice shoots. Instead, Kommineni Srinivasa Rao walks across a vast expanse of hard, cracked soil where his plow refuses to bite. For Srinivasa Rao, who owns four acres of land and leases six more, the 2026 monsoon was a harsh reality. His days are now an anxious vigil under a cloudless sky, so he fears that he will spend the last of his borrowed funds—one last gamble with a harvest that may never bear a single grain. Across Andhra Pradesh, Srinivasa Rao’s nightmare is repeating itself on a mass scale, turning a routine farming season into a desperate test of financial survival due to water scarcity, dwindling or delayed crop coverage and relentlessly rising cultivation costs.

For thousands of farm families across the state, the primary concern is no longer which crop will fetch a good price in the market. Instead, the question is, can they plant anything at all? What crops can survive with dwindling water supplies? Or will their harvest ever cover their mounting debts?

Published – 28 Aug 2026 07:51 IST