[ad_1]
Coronavirus: Scarcity of labour has compelled farmers to innovate and use machines this yr
Raipur Jattan/Singapore:
For greater than 20 years, farmer Ravindra Kajal cultivated rice the way in which his forefathers had – each June he flooded his fields with water earlier than hiring a military of farmhands to plant paddy seedlings.
But a shortage of employees this yr due to the coronavirus compelled Mr Kajal to vary. He irrigated the sphere simply sufficient to moisten the soil and leased a drilling machine to straight sow seeds on his 9-acre plot.
“Since I was more than comfortable with the tried-and-tested way of growing rice, I opted for the new method with some trepidation,” mentioned Mr Kajal, 46, trying over his area, inexperienced with rice saplings, in Raipur Jattan village in Haryana.
“But I’ve already saved around Rs 7,500 per acre because I hardly spent on water and workers this year,” he mentioned.
India is the world’s greatest exporter of rice and the world’s second-biggest producer after China. Across the nation’s grain bowl states of Haryana and neighbouring Punjab, hundreds of farmers like Mr Kajal have been compelled by the coronavirus to mechanise planting.
They are nonetheless cautious of the know-how and overturning the time-honoured use of handbook labour.
But Kahan Singh Pannu, Punjab’s Agriculture Secretary, is satisfied a historic change is underway that might dramatically enhance India’s rice output, which in flip might influence world markets.
“It is no less than a revolution in Indian agriculture,” he informed Reuters.
Government officers say the so-called direct seeding of rice (DSR) methodology might enhance yields by about one-third and slash prices on employees and water.
Government officers say the so-called direct seeding of rice (DSR) methodology might enhance yields by about one-third and slash prices on employees and water.
The DSR machines permit farmers to develop greater than 30 saplings per sq. metre in opposition to the same old 15 to 18 seedlings, mentioned Naresh Gulati, a state authorities farm official in Punjab.
Punjab is the house of the 1960s Green Revolution that led to a spike in crop yields. This yr, farmers there have used seed drilling machines to sow rice on greater than half one million hectares, an enormous enhance in contrast with lower than 50,000 hectares in 2019, growers and authorities officers mentioned.
Mr Pannu expects DSR use to leap once more subsequent yr.
“More and more farmers are using the DSR technology which seems to be so promising that the entire 2.7 million hectares of Punjab’s rice area could come under it next year, which will be a watershed for India’s rice production,” he mentioned.
Avinash Kishore, a analysis fellow on the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), mentioned if this yr’s crop was good, DSR could be the way in which ahead. “The scale of this year’s shift to the DSR is a momentous change in rice cultivation in India,” he mentioned.
Sudhanshu Singh, a senior agronomist on the International Rice Research Institute within the Philippines, mentioned the shift to DSR was “one of the rare positive fallouts from COVID.”
None of the world’s main rice exporting nations – India, Vietnam and Thailand – makes important use of seeding machines.
They have come into play in an enormous manner in India this yr as a result of lots of of hundreds of migrant labourers from Bihar and Jharkhand didn’t arrive within the northern grain belt for the 2020 planting season as a result of coronavirus lockdown.
That pushed up the worth of native employees and made it extra economical for farmers to lease rice planting machines quite than pay for employed assist, mentioned Jaskaran Singh Mahal, a director on the Punjab Agricultural University.
Farm wages have gone up by Rs 1,500 an acre to about Rs 4,500 this yr, and growers want round half a dozen employees to transplant rice paddy on a one acre plot.
In comparability, farmers can rent planting machines for Rs 5,000 to Rs 6,000 per acre, which may cowl 25 to 30 acres in a day, rice growers mentioned.
“Other than helping us save on major overheads such as water and labour, DSR is swift, unlike the old method which was tedious and time-consuming,” mentioned Devinder Singh Gill, a farmer in Punjab’s Moga district, well-known for its fragrant basmati rice.
The standard methodology requires farmers to sow seeds in nurseries after which await 20 to 30 days earlier than manually transplanting the seedlings into plantation fields which can be ankle-deep in water.
Seeding machines permit farmers to bypass the nursery stage and plant straight into fields.
Water conservation is one other key attribute of DSR, which is essential in a principally dry, monsoon dependent nation like India.
Under the standard methodology, 3,000 to five,000 litres of water is utilized in India to supply 1 kg of rice – essentially the most water-thirsty crop – and DSR permits growers to chop water use by no less than 50 per cent to 60 per cent, farmers and authorities officers mentioned.
The foremost problem for farmers utilizing direct seeding machines is managing weeds, which require the spraying of herbicides by the season.
Still, even factoring within the further prices of those functions, the general price of cultivation is considerably decrease below DSR, mentioned Mr Kajal, the farmer in Haryana.
Another downside will likely be that if the strategy is adopted throughout the farm belt, there will likely be large unemployment within the jap states subsequent yr.
But farmers say they may wait to see the harvest in October earlier than deciding whether or not to stay with the know-how subsequent yr.
“The new technology leads to a lot of saving on account of water and labour, but the real test lies in productivity and farmers will not be fully convinced unless they see some rise in their yields,” mentioned Ashok Singh, a rice farmer.
[ad_2]
Source link
