Agricultural activities begin but farmers apprehensive
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, April 25 2020: In the wake of exemption of agricultural activities from the ongoing lockdown and the State receiving some rainfall during the past few days, farmers have started agricultural activities particularly tilling of fields in the valley areas of the State.

However, many farmers are apprehensive whether agricultural activities will be hampered in the coming days owing to certain recurring problems/factors like non-availability of seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and lack of irrigation facilities.

As such, many farmers have drawn the attention of the State Government, particularly Agriculture Department to take up pre-emptive and pro-active measures to ward off these recurring problems.

Agricultural activities begin but farmers apprehensive

During a random survey carried out by this reporter in some areas of Imphal East and Imphal West districts, mass scale ploughing of paddy fields were seen unlike in the past few weeks.

While interacting with this reporter at Loumanbi near Uchekon of Imphal East, the farmers said that ploughing of paddy fields has started in the area only when it received some rainfall in the last few days.

Some said that the exemption of agricultural activities from the purview of the ongoing lockdown and the distribution of diesel for tractors in few oil pumps made every farmer rush to their paddy fields.

They said that ploughing could not be done for a couple of days as the paddy fields were hardened owing to a prolonged dry spell.

Moreover, farmers could not hire tractors as diesel was not available.

A farmer who identified himself as Thokchom Shanti said that the late arrival of monsoon is fuelling worries over inadequate water supply for irrigation in the coming days.

He said that the volume of rainfall received so far is still inadequate and paddy fields still need more rainfall to boost agricultural activities.

Cautioning that the State's agricultural activity could be derailed in the coming days due to dearth of water for irrigation, Shanti urged the Government to take up prior arrangement for providing irrigation facilities and also to overcome any kind of unfavourable situation to agriculture.

On the other hand, Nongthombam Mocha, a farmer who owns a tractor said that finding diesel for ploughing has become a difficult task for tractor owners while informing that he got 50 litres of diesel from PCTC, Khoyathong after standing in a long queue since the wee hours.

He also said that closure of oil pumps till the last few days had delayed ploughing of fields and pumping of water to fields from nearby water bodies.

Meanwhile, many farmers expressed worry that there is limited stock of phoudis (rice seeds for sowing) this year as very little paddy was reaped from vast tracts of paddy fields last year due to the drought like situation last year.

They demanded the Agriculture Department to make phoudis which are good in quality and suitable to the soil of the State easily available in time in addition to fertilizers and pesticides.

Mention may be made that occurrences of floods and drought-like situation had hit hard the State's Agriculture sector multiple times in the past few years.