MANGALORE, May 25: The Monsoon is here, rightly at a time that could be termed as precise. With the summer heat behind the society is waking up to a new line up of activities, the district has suddenly turned into a bee hive of activities and everybody appear to be now concentrating  on problems related to abundance of water.
 
The Mangalore city which is never ready for handling situations inundation, flooding, landslides and even sea erosion will have enough of problem at hand. With the roads being constructed in more than three places within the core city people are going to have a terrible time. Many of the drains which are set with silt especially in the low lying areas like Maroli, Pandeshwar will have flooding. These areas are prone for flooding during the monsoons. The Mangalore City Corporation area which is in a perennial need of maintenance do not get enough funds for rain related relief works. Authorities say that there is no special funding for treating such problems. Many of the problems get solved by themselves after few initial rains. There are several places in the city that are prone for flooding.
 
In the district there is a different kind of activity. The farming community after a hiatus of six months has come to the fields and is planning for the new Khariff season.

The district in accordance with the new agriculture policy of the state has increased its coverage of Khariff area by 4.5 percent both in land as well as target for yield. The district has four taluks with moderate to high concentration of agricultural lands namely in Mangalore, Puttur, Buntwal and Belthangady while in Sullia the agricultural land under Khariff has dwindled to a meager 485 hectares as the taluk has converted most of its agricultural lands into horticultural and commercial plantations mainly Areca and Rubber respectively.

1The agriculture department has targeted to cover 35,000 hectares under Khariff 2007 (33,090 hectares in 2006). Since the district gets over 4000 mm of rains annually during the Khariff period, only paddy is suitable for Khariff crop. The district has also started preparation to double its paddy production by next ten years as per the new farm policy 2006 of the government. Mangalore taluk has 12,700 hectares, followed by Buntwal 9,500 hectares, Belthangady 8,375 hectares, Puttur 3,940 hectares and Sullia 485 hectares. The difference in area between Sullia and other taluks is because of the preference of people of the taluk for horticultural and plantation crops. The 1971 figures indicated that Sullia had nearly 2,800 hectares under paddy cultivation.

The district consumes about 170 tonnes of seeds the farmers prefer to use the seeds particularly sold by the Karnataka State Seed Corporation (KSSC). Farmers in the district also prefer the MO-4 and Jaya variety which has been developed by Acharya N.G. Ranga University of Agriculture of Andhra Pradesh. These are hardy varieties which can withstand heavy rains and yet retain the quality of rice.

The district has been affected by land fragmentation as the family system of farmers could not support large holdings. According to the revenue land holding pattern, about 80 per cent are either small or medium farmers and there are no big farmers in the district. About 20 per cent of the farmland has been left uncultivated owing to high cultivation costs.