The harvest of Boro paddy is nearing completion in spite of serious labours crisis due to spread of coronavirus in all the ten upazilas of Netrakona district. However, the farmers are expecting good yield this year.
From the beginning of the peak hour of the harvest period, the farmers have faced a big challenge of laboures shortage seriously as fearing coronavirus and flash flood, but the favorable weather also assist farmers to overcome the challenge.
The face of the farmers is showing smile. They are now happy as they managed making a safe harvest.
Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) in Netrakona earlier have taken a massive programme to bring 1, 84,530 hectors of land under Boro crops cultivation in district with fixing the production target of 11,19,561 metric tons of paddy. Of the total 1,77,390 hectors of High Yielding Variety (HYV), 11377 hectors are Highbrid and only 534 hectors are local variety.
The production target of Boro paddy this season exceeded in the district which is much to the delight of farmers, while, Boro paddy was cultivated on 1,84,530 hactares of land last year. In last year, the Boro paddy was produced bumper but early flood damaged these
Habibur Rahman, Deputy Director of Netrakona DAE, told the Bangladesh Post that the cultivation target has already been exceeded by 18000 hectors of land. “This year the excellent growing Boro plants have shown eye-catching looks of the crop field changing color by ripen as turn as Golden color in the haor areas which turning the farmers face smile, the weather have favoured and the farmers get a bumper production this season,” he said.
The DAE with the direct supervision of Netrakona District Administration, has taken steps to make harvest easily and rapidly in the haor areas of the district.
On the other hands, leaders and activists of Awami Legue and its front bodies also joined hands with the farmers to cut the ripen Boro paddy. So far, 90 percent of ripen Boro paddy has already been harvested without any danger. The rest of the ripen paddy will be harvest within next seven days.
M Mayeenul Islam, Deputy Commissioner (DC) of Netrakona, said that the government provides a total of 64 Combine Harvesters and 40 Ripper machines in an emergency basis to harvest ripen Boro paddy easily and horridly in the haor areas of the district amid the fear of the spreads of coronacirus and flash flood.
Golam Mustafa, a farmer of Borantor village under Mohangonj upazila, said that with the co-operation of local agriculture department, he hired Combine Harvesters and Ripper machine to harvest my ripen Boro paddy and completed his harvest work easily this year.
“As, I got unexpected profit from Boro paddy farming last year. I increased the area this year in my cultivable land for Boro crop hoping that he will get a bumper production this year,” he said.
Rahmat Ali, a farmer of Pagla village under Kalmakanda upazila, said that he cultivated Rabi crops like mug, bean, green chilli, sweet potato and watermelon last year in his land but unfortunately, those Rabi crops had badly damaged by unseasonable rain last year. This year, he has taken these land under Boro paddy cultivation this season to make up for the losses last year for unseasonable rain.
