Summer carries a different vibe among farming communities in South Asia. It is the harvesting season of summer fruits such as mango, jack fruit, watermelon and so on. It is also the time for planning and preparing for the upcoming monsoon season. Even through the soaring heat, which can reach 42°C in some parts of the region, the celebration of a bountiful harvest is deeply rooted in culture.
In Nagaland, India, Ao Nada tribe celebrates Moatsu Festival in May. It marks the end of sowing season – a time to rest, celebrate and reconnect as a community. In Sri Lanka, Wap Magula (The Ploughing Festival) is a ceremonial inauguration of the ploughing and sowing season for the Yala (interim) crop cycle. Community elders, peasant farmers, and often state officials gather in the fields to perform traditional sowing rituals, accompanied by folk drumming and community feasts.
The pre-monsoon summer rain brings relief to bhoomi (earth) and annadatas (those who give us food) both. For farming communities, summer is never just hardship but is also waiting, and hoping. That anticipation is what makes 2026 so difficult to reckon with. This year, the rains have not arrived as promised. The heat has not relented.
Countries including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have seen temperatures soar well above seasonal averages, with some areas approaching or exceeding 45°C in June. Even though this region is not new to heatwaves, the intensity, duration, and the geographical spread of this year’s heatwave has brought unprecedented disruption to agriculture sector. From peasants to farm labourers, farm vendors to consumers, everybody is bearing the brunt of what scientists attribute to super El-Nino.
Crops such as mango have failed due to unpredictable weather pattern. As the blossoms were turning into tender young mangoes, extreme heat caused farmers to lose more than half their expected yield. Compounding the crisis, freak pre-monsoon hailstorms battered the region, knocking the remaining fruit from the branches. There is less demand, price drop, export restrictions due to low quality for farmers whose only livelihood is a crop that yields once a year, this year hasn’t been kind.
The damage is not confined to any one country. In India, mango yields have collapsed. In Nepal, rice cultivation on the plains has failed due to absent rainfall. Across Bangladesh and Pakistan, heat stress has cut into nearly every major summer crop.
Crop failure, price drop, fuel price hike have been common among all crops grown in the region. Now, with the prediction of weak monsoon – a region where 60% of the total cultivated area is rain-fed agriculture, and extended warning of heat waves till mid-July; the region is facing a serious threat to food security.
Major cities such as Karachi, Delhi, Bengaluru, Kathmandu depend on peri-urban farmers for their daily food supply. They are now facing significant price increases as harvests shrink and supply chains strain under the heat.
Landless farm labourers – among them especially women – are working in unimaginably harsh conditions. They are getting hospitalised for sun burn, cardiovascular strain, kidney injury, and respiratory illnesses. Daily wage is reduced due to the reduced labour hours. This has a downstream effect of inability to access nutrition and medication.
Yet, not all farmers are bearing the brunt of this heatwave equally.
Across the region, farmers who have shifted away from conventional agriculture – adopting agroecological methods such as Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) and organic practices, have seen their land hold up through the heat. The climate resilient crops they have chosen, combined with healthier soils, have offered them a buffer that chemical dependent farms lack. Hanumanthappa, a mushroom farmer from Mudhol, Karnataka, notes that the elevated temperatures have actually been optimal for his crops. His income has grown as a result. But these are scattered examples. Taken together, they are not yet enough to offset the scale of the crisis. What they offer, instead, is a direction.
Farmers organisations across the region have been calling on their governments to intervene. Their demands share a common thread;
- Implement compensation for prevailing Minimum Support Price (MSP)rates and direct income support for farm labourers – the majority of whom are women – who have lost wages due to reduced working hours in extreme heat
- Mandate safety and precautionary measures for farm labourers working in extreme heat, including regulated working hours, access to drinking water, shade, and first aid at worksites, and compensation for heat-related hospitalisation
- Provide subsidised access to seeds, fertilisers, and fuel through and interest free crop loans to ensure farmers can prepare for and cultivate the upcoming Kharif (monsoon) season without taking informal loans.
- Full or partial waiver of outstanding agricultural loans for farmers who have suffered crop failure, alongside a moratorium on loan recovery during the crisis period
- Immediate disbursal of crop insurance claims with minimal documentation to be submitted.
- Long-term investment in decentralised storage and processing infrastructure facilities at the village and tehsil (block level).
What the region needs now is a policy that meets the scale of this crisis. Governments need to intervene to give short-term relief for farmers and labourers already under strain, and long-term investment in agroecological transitions that can withstand the seasons to come.
Governments must act not just to manage the damage, but to restore the dignity, security, and sovereignty of the peasant families who feed us.