El Nino fears push Srikakulam and Vizianagaram farmers toward water-saving rice methods
Rice growers in northern Andhra Pradesh are shifting toward direct seeding and alternate wetting methods as El Nino threatens a weaker monsoon and tighter water supplies.
Farmers in the Srikakulam and Vizianagaram districts of northern Andhra Pradesh are accelerating a shift away from permanently flooded paddy cultivation as they prepare for a potentially weaker monsoon under El Nino. The concern is straightforward: if rainfall arrives late or remains below normal during the kharif season, conventional transplanting systems become much harder to manage, especially for growers relying on limited borewell water and rain-fed field conditions.
The Economic Times describes the case of 52-year-old farmer Majji Satyam from JR Puram village in Srikakulam district. He farms five acres and has two borewells, but until now had always grown paddy the traditional way, with nursery raising, transplanting and standing water in the field until harvest. This season, after years of training through Dr Reddy’s Foundation, he decided to try DSR, or Direct Seeded Rice, which places seed straight into the field and avoids both nursery management and continuous waterlogging.
The article says the change is spreading across both districts. Dr Reddy’s Foundation works with farmers in more than 1,500 villages covering roughly 10 lakh acres of paddy area under its Action for Climate and Environment programme. In coordination with state agriculture departments and Krishi Vigyan Kendras, the programme is pushing growers to reduce water-intensive paddy, diversify toward short-duration crops, or shift acreage into pulses and cereals. Another farmer, R Sanyas Rao, who tested wet DSR on five acres last kharif, is moving further this year with dry DSR on two acres and maize on three.
Water savings are the strongest argument behind the transition. According to Suman Saraswathibatla, Director for Rural Livelihoods and Climate Action at Dr Reddy’s Foundation, dry DSR can save around 11-12 lakh litres of water per acre, wet DSR around 4-5.5 lakh litres, and Alternate Wetting and Drying around 3-5 lakh litres compared with conventional flooded paddy. Last year farmers in the two districts used DSR on 3,667 acres and AWD on 21,963 acres, saving more than 3,000 crore litres of water and cutting over 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions.
The agronomic adjustment is broader than seed placement. For DSR and AWD to work properly, moisture has to remain stable in the upper 30-40 centimetres of soil, which is changing sowing decisions. In this cyclone-prone and rain-fed belt, paddy sowing has shifted from late June toward July over the past three to four years, while peak transplanting now tends to move into August. Farmers are also being encouraged to use cover crops such as black gram, green gram and sesame during the May-June gap before kharif, alongside green-manuring crops such as sunn hemp and napier to hold soil moisture.
The report also highlights a soil-health constraint that could shape yields under a drier season. Through a Hyderabad laboratory launched in January 2025, the foundation issued more than 5,000 soil health cards last year and found consistently low organic carbon, deficiencies of sulphur, zinc and boron, and excess potash across many fields. That is why the current push combines water-saving rice methods with site-specific nutrient management, so that farmers facing El Nino and a tighter fertilizer market do not continue applying nutrients by habit instead of according to actual soil need.