Farmers of Nuapada district are waiting for hours in front of different banks to resister for crop insurance. Deficient rainfall in July has caused desperation among them.
Registration for insurance started on July 20, but it is learnt that due to problem in the server, the online works have come to a standstill. The dateline for crop insurance is July 31 July; so, the farmers are worried.
“Had there been good showers, we would not have come for insurance,” said the farmers. “Even a good rain today would reduce the number in the insurance queue,” said some of them.
Deficiency in rainfall, specifically in July, leads to desperation among the farmers because it affects all kinds of crops cultivated in up, medium and low lands.
In July this year, the district as a whole has received 177.1 mm of rainfall which is 49.1% less than the normal of 347.1 mm. The block-wise rainfall figures are further disappointing. Khariar block received 112.3 mm, which is 32.35 per cent of the normal rainfall in July.
There is deficient rainfall in the other four blocks — Boden, Sinapali, Komna and Nuapada received 46.07 per cent, 50.13 per cent, 58.20 per cent and 58 per cent of the normal rainfalls, respectively.
“We have not experienced a single shower of rain this year that would let the paddy field accumulate one inch of water,” said Rabindra Kumar of Duajhar village. “We cannot undertake transplantation and Beusaning,” added he.
“The paddy plants are not dying due to small amount of rainfall on a regular basis, but farmers need Beusaning for which a good rainfall is necessary,” said Boden block Assistant Agriculture Officer (AAO) Pradip Trivedi. “Many farmers have also not started transplantation due to shortage of water,” he added.
To add to the woes of farmers, the paddy plants, mostly of Swarna variety, are turning red. “It is a disease called blast. It happens due to lack of seed treatment,” said Trivedi. He stated that the farmers have been advised to replace the Swarna seeds with other varieties available in the market. However, farmers say alternative is not available. It seems the farmers are not interested in taking risk with other new seeds as Swarna is a tested variety for them.
Farmers are fighting with a variety of such problems year after year, but the Government is not trying to address even the basic ones like irrigation and fixing of remunerative prices of agricultural produces. Failure of rain is not a new phenomenon, but the Government has never tried to find out alternatives. More than 75 per cent of farmland in the district is yet to be irrigated even after seven decades of the country’s Independence.