Amid labour crunch, farmers begin paddy transplantation
Increased input cost adds to woes of growers
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Ajay Joshi
Tribune News Service
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Jalandhar, June 10
Paddy Transplantation Advanced By Five Days
- The state government has given a relaxation of five days for paddy transplantation as till last year, the sowing process used to begin only after June 15
- To cope up with the labour crisis, the state Agriculture Department also insisted on the ‘Direct Sowing of Rice’ (DSR) technique, which began from June 1 and will continue till June 20
Till now over 75,000 hectares of land have been covered under the DSR technique which was only 1,300 last year, stated Gulati
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Farmers in the district today began the manual sowing of paddy. Perturbed over the inflated labour cost, farmers claimed that due to shortage of farm labourers, they couldn’t cover much area on the first day and the sowing remained limited.
Notably, the labour cost has increased from Rs 3,000 to Rs 5,000 per acre this year. As per the district agriculture department, only 180 hectares of the land was sown with on the first day of the traditional sowing method.
Paddy is a major Kharif crop in the state and is expected to be sown under 1,68,000 hectares land, said, Naresh Gulati, Agriculture Officer, Jalandhar.
Palwinder Singh, a farmer at Lidhran village tried to convince the labourers to reduce their charges. He said, “Ever since the labourers had moved back to their villages due to lockdown, it had become difficult for them to arrange more hands for timely sowing of paddy and the ones who were available, have hiked their prices. They are now asking to pay them Rs 4,000 for the fields that they sowed last year for Rs 2,500. This year we have also experimented with the DSR technique and if it gives expected yield we will shift to it from next year onwards as it takes only Rs 1,200 for sowing one acre land.”
Similarly, Sandeep Singh, a farmer from Momandpur village in Bhogpur said, the sowing process remained dry today as he couldn’t fetch enough labourers. We are facing acute shortage of labour to transplant paddy saplings. Most of the labourers have left for their home states. Even as the date for the sowing has been shifted five days prior the sowing will continue for more than 20 days. We are yet to convince the labourers to cut down the labour cost,” added Sandeep.
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