Direct seeding of rice gets tepid response despite incentive

Tribune News Service

Nitish Sharma

Ambala, June 23

The government-backed direct seeding of rice (DSR) technique scheme is receiving a lukewarm response, despite an incentive of Rs 4,000 per acre.

40 camps held to educate farmers

This year, 40 camps were held to educate farmers. They show reluctance due to weeds but it can be controlled by timely use of weedicide and right implementation of the technique. Dr Girish Nagpal, Deputy Director (Agriculture), Ambala

June 30 last date of registration

The department had set a target to cover 1 lakh acre under the DSR techniques in 12 paddy growing districts of Haryana for the kharif season. As per the information, the data of around 63,000-acre area has been registered on the portal till Tuesday and June 30 is the last date of registration.

Against the target of 7,000 acre for the Kharif season, so far, Ambala has achieved just over 2,400 acre, while the optimum time for sowing through DSR is almost over.

A senior official said, “The department offered an incentive to farmers who adopt the DSR technique. The farmers were also interested, but a long drier spell of heat wave and absence of pre-sowing moisture that was required in the field for the DSR became a major obstacle this year. The issue of excessive weeds and reluctance of farmers to leave conservative methods are also the reason behind the tepid response to the scheme.”

Agriculture experts say that the DSR technique involves direct seeding of rice rather than the conservative transplantation method. It requires lesser use of water, resources and labour, and is considered a better technique in view of the depleting watertable. From May 20 to June 15 is the optimum time for the DSR to get optimum yield. Rain was required in May end and the optimum sowing time went unquenched. Now, the farmers are least interested in taking any risk in view of the onset of monsoon and will continue to grow paddy as per the conservative method.

Dr Girish Nagpal, Deputy Director (Agriculture), Ambala, said, “The data of around 2,407 acre has been registered on the ‘Meri Fasal Mera Bayora’ portal and as per the field report it will cross the 3,000-acre mark as there are several farmers who have adopted the DSR technique but they are yet to get them registered. The farmers can save upto 20 per cent water and bring the cost of labour down substantially by adopting the DSR. It has also been observed that the fields where DSR was adopted, the yield of succeeding wheat crop also increased by around 100 kg per acre, compared to the fields where paddy was sown through conventional techniques. The increase in yield may be due to the less compaction of land.”

“Farmers show reluctance due to weeds but it can be controlled by the timely use of weedicide and right implementation of the technique,” he added.

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