Hoshiarpur: Wild boar attack on crop leaves farmers worried

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj

Jalandhar, June 20

In a week, paddy transplantation will start and Parminder Singh, a farmer from Dadiana Kalan from Hoshiarpur, is ready with crackers, phenyl, iron wires and a battery to keep wild boars away.

Assurance to farmers

The wild boar issue is troubling farmers a lot. Yes, the area under maize has reduced. We will definitely adopt measures so that the cultivation of maize increases. Kewal Singh, CAO

Apart from worrying about the input cost, growth of paddy and income, another major worry that has engrossed his mind is how to tackle the attack of wild boars on the crop. He is not alone, the farmers living near Kandi and Bet areas in Hoshiarpur have this fear. They burst crackers and spread phenyl clothes outside their fields so that the smell keeps off the boars.

Farmers have also installed an iron wire along the fields with a battery that creates current in the wire. “Last year, I had sown maize on 1.5 acres but wild boars ravaged my entire field and I was just left with 10 corncobs (challis). I had suffered a heavy loss. There was an input cost of Rs 40,000 in preparing the crop on 1.5 acres,” Parminder said.

The gravity of the problem is such that the farmers have started reducing area under other crops like maize, paddy, groundnuts and have switched to agroforestry.

As per the information received from the Agriculture Department, the decrease of 7,000 hectares and 5,000 hectares of area has been witnessed in the case of maize and paddy crop over the years.

Another farmer Jaswinder Singh from Lambra village said, “Whenever a boar try to enter the field and touches iron wires, it gets shocked. But, it is very costly. Not only this, we also make rounds of our fields at night with torch. I used to grow maize, paddy along with sugarcane on eight acres of fields, but now I have switched to growing of trees.”

The area under poplar and eucalyptus has increased from 15,000 hectares in 2019 to more than 25,000 hectares this time. With the mushrooming of plywood factories in the area, the switch to poplar and eucalyptus has become a great source of earning for farmers.

They have been demanding subsidy on electric fence which can be a suitable alternative to shoo away wild boars. Senior officials from the administration say that the subsidy on electric fencing, which was stopped years ago, should be restored as it will be of a great help to the farmers. “The wild boars attack on the crops is affecting farmers’ income. The permits to shoot wild boars are also issued by the SDMs after checking every detail properly,” Komal Mittal, Hoshiarpur DC.