Harvesting picks up pace in Amritsar, courtesy dry weather

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, April 28

Wheat harvesting in rural areas is slowly picking up the pace with the weather remaining mostly dry for the past few days. As of Tuesday, around 20 per cent of the crop has been harvested.

An official of the District Mandi Board said: “The arrival of wheat will increase exponentially in the next two days as harvesting is expected to be at its peak. Around 50 percent of the crop is expected to be harvested by the end of this week.”

Last year, 6, 82, 905 tonnes of wheat had arrived to the mandis. In the current season, however, around 1.46 lakh metric tonnes of wheat has arrived as of now. The mandi official said a majority of the crop was being purchased by government procurement agencies and the share of private buyers was negligible.

Chief Agricultural Officer (CAO) Harinderjit Singh said hot and dry weather is crucial for ripening of wheat grains. “Dry weather in the past few days has resulted in decrease in moisture in grains and the harvesting has increased. But crop in some areas has not ripened fully. So the farmers should wait for a few more days and harvest the fields only when the crop has ripened completely,” the CAO said. He said the moisture level of grains was being checked at the entrance of markets, so the farmers might have to face trouble if they had harvested early.

“Combine operators have also been asked to sanitise their machines frequently and observe other norms such as social distancing,” he said, adding that harvesting was being done mainly with machines and expect for operating machinery, no other work was being done by manual labour.

He said in view of the Covid-19 pandemic, farmers should consider it as their moral duty to refrain from burning stubble as it would increase pollution and lead to breathing-related problems.