After the recent floods, a new menace is haunting the farmers in Assam now.
A pest known as Army worms or Swarming caterpillars have returned after 49 years to damage the standing crops in close to 20,000 hectares of cropland in ten districts of Assam, which have been replanted by the farmers after the recent floods.
The Agriculture department said that the same pests have attacked and destroyed large number of farmlands in Assam in 1967. Although there have been occasional appearance of the pests sometimes, it is for the first time after 1967 that the pests have attacked the croplands in such a big way.
“Ten districts have been affected due to the pests attack—Golaghat, Dibrugarh, Jorhat, Majuli, North lakhimpur, Sivsagar, Kokrajhar, Dhubri, Nalbari, Barpeta. We have already taken steps to contain the pests and relieve the farmers. A total of 17,418 hectares of land have came under the attack of the pests so far,” said State Agriculture Minister Atul Bora while addressing the media on Monday.
The condition is worst in Golaghat district where about 6,671 hectares of farmland have been nearly destroyed followed by Dibrugarh district with 5,000 hectares of land being attacked.
“The attack of the Army worms has taken an endemic form. It is a matter of concern for sure as the farmers have already suffered due to recent floods. We are working on the matter and our officers are already in the fields taking stock of the situation,” Bora said.
“We have spoken to the scientists in Assam Agricultural University (AAU) in Jorhat over the matter taking steps to contain the menace. The department is going to procure the medicines required to spray in the affected fields and help the farmers,” said Bora.
Insecticides were being distributed among farmers to control the pest, he added.
Farmers in Assam are largely dependent on rain-fed paddy, though the area under rice cultivation has reduced over the years to about 25 lakh hectares in the 2015-16 fiscal. The average annual yield of rice since the 2012-13 fiscal has been 52 million tones.
The recent waves of floods have affected 2,17,414 hectares of state’s agricultural land and damaged standing crops on it. The Assam Agriculture department has estimated the total damage due to flood this year at Rs193.06 crores.