Statesman News Service
MALDA, 13 APRIL: The absence of rainfall, coupled with pest attack, has caused disaster for the bodo paddy cultivation in Malda. The farmers in Chanchal block –I, suffered a major loss at the beginning of this year. The attack has come in the form stem-borer and the farmers are apparently clueless about how to tackle it.
While the affected farmers allege that agriculture department officials have not visited the affected areas to inspect the extent of damage and suggest remedial measures, the agriculture department officials said that using pesticide at this juncture would be unwise.
“The menace is acute in areas where the farmers did not use pesticide before transplantation. We need to measure extent of economic threshold level before applying pesticide at this stage”, said the assistant director, technical agriculture department, Mr Soumendranath Das.
For the farmers, it is matter of staving off the loss. “Lack of rain and irrigation facilities affected the bodo crop in the first stage and now the pest attack threatens to destroy the plants before flowering”, a farmer lamented. According to them , they cannot make up for the lack of rain by irrigating the fields using shallow pumps as the ground water level has gone down unusually due to the ongoing dry spell in the district.
Under the circumstances, the agriculture departments’ target of cultivating bodo paddy in 42,000 hectares of land in Chanchal sub-division alone looks unachievable.
The agriculture department officials admit they have received information about the pest attack. According to them water scarcity has caused the pest to proliferate.
Mr Das said the department has dispatched ‘krishi projukti sahayaks’ to the affected areas to help the farmers in this regard.
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