The achievement was largely on account of innovative fire-fighting measures adopted by the state's agriculture department.

According to officials of the department, the inclement weather late last year caused widespread destruction of most rabi crops. While barley fell short of the target of 7.25 lakh tonnes by 1.25 lakh tonnes, peas fell short of the production target of 6 lakh tonnes by one lakh tonnes. Similarly, while the total production of lentils was a mere 3 lakh tonnes against a target of 4.5 lakh tonnes, arhar fell short of its target of seven lakh tonnes by two lakh tonnes. However, in the case of wheat, the main rabi crop, the state government was able to salvage the situation to a considerable extent and the state produced 235 lakh tonnes of wheat against a target of 244 lakh tonnes. Onthe whole, the cumulative rabi production was 262 lakh tonnes against a target of 279 lakh tonnes, while total agricultural production for the year 1997-98 was 421.61 lakh tonnes compared with 423.65 lakh tonnes in the preceding year.

Sources in the state agriculture department attributed the relatively good wheat harvest under adverse circumstances to the missionary approach adopted by the department.

The officials actively campaigned for adoption of late sowing wheat varieties among disheartened farmers.

In fact, farmers were encouraged to resow wheat wherever crops were damaged instead of resowing other crops including potato, which had suffered extensive damage. While the area under cultivation of potato crop dwindled considerably and production consequently plummeted to a mere 65 lakh tonnes compared with a record production for 105 lakh tonnes in 1996-97, the area under wheat increased manifold.

From the normal 90 lakh hectares utilised for cultivation of the crop, over 92 lakh hectares wereutilised for wheat sowing.

To encourage farmers to sow late sowing varieties of wheat, the state government also pitched in with an additional 25 per cent subsidy on wheat seeds. Further, it also resorted to procuring seeds from other states to make up for any shortfall on account of damage to the standing wheat crop. Almost 50 per cent of the land available for the crop was sown on time. Experts recommend November and December for early sowing varieties since the temperature at this time is best suited for the crop. This time, over 46 lakh hectares had already been sown with the early sowing varieties before the inclement weather hit the state. And far from damaging the crop, the rains actually proved beneficial for the early sowing varieties. The damage was largely confined to the mid-sowing varieties.

In cases where damaged rabi crops were resown with late sowing wheat varieties, too, the weather gods were kind and the cool weather held through most of March. According to sources, an early heralding ofsummer would have been disastrous for the late sowing varieties.

The combined effect of these factors was that a relatively healthy harvest of around 20-25 quintals per hectare was acquired even under adverse conditions. What also bailed the state out was the efforts of the past few years during which the agriculture department has managed to increase the productivity from 19 to 21 quintals/hectare to around 25-26 quintals/hectare at present through implementation of modern technologies, replacement of low yielding varieties with higher yielding varieties and provision of fertilisers to farmers at highly subsidised rates and even free of cost.Officials of the state government, were, however, quick to concede that UP did not fare as badly as the two other major wheat producing states - Punjab and Haryana - since the inclement weather affected these states far more extensively.

They said since farmers in the two states largely went in for time-bound intensive cultivation, the losses incurred by them werefar greater than the farmers of Uttar Pradesh, who were mainly small and marginal farmers.It was far easier to convince small and marginal farmers whose priority was food before additional income to resow destroyed crops with late sowing wheat varieties.

Farmers in Punjab and Haryana, on the other hand, are largely commercial in their outlook and, hence, it is far more difficult to convince them, officials said.

For the forthcoming rabi season, the UP state government has hiked up its production target to 294 lakh tonnes and is hopeful of achieving it.