Jhapa farmers reluctant to use machines to plant paddy

By Our Correspondent,Damak, July 1: Farmers in Jhapa district are currently busy planting paddy, the main food crop.

The farmers have started planting paddy after they recently received continuous rain. They have been planting paddy using both traditional tools like plough and modern machines.

Even though the cost of production has increased due to various causes like the rise in the fuel price, shortage of agricultural labourers and their high wage rates, the farmers have planted paddy in an effort not to keep their paddy fields barren.

Khyam Acharya, a leading farmer of Kamal Rural Municipality-6, said that it was beneficial to eat rice by buying it from the market but that the farmers were planting paddy in the field only not to leave their paddy fields barren.

Use of machinery in paddy planting has started at the initiative of the local government and local agricultural cooperatives, but only a limited number of farmers have access to the machinery.

Parmila Tiwari, Deputy Chair of Kamal Rural Municipality, said that as the number of people with the traditionally adopted agricultural occupation is large, the farmers are getting frustrated with the increasing cost of farming.

“We are encouraging the farmers to cultivate, but when we reach their fields, they keep on complaining about various issues,” he said.

Tractors charge up to Rs. 2,500 for ploughing the field for an hour. In recent times, farmers have almost stopped using oxen and buffaloes to plough their fields.

However, according to Kumar Parajuli, Manager of Small Farmers’ Cooperative Organisation located at Kamal Rural Municipality- 6, the service is being provided free of cost to the farmers who want to plant paddy using the rice planting machine this time.

“This time, we have used the paddy planting machine for free. We also facilitated the farmers to keep the appropriate seedbeds of paddy to make it easy for the machine to plant paddy.

The rural municipality has given a ‘Rice Transplanter’ machine in a subsidy to small farmer cooperatives.

It is also said that the farmers were reluctant to use machine because they had to grow paddy seedlings in a different way than the traditional way.

He said that they planted paddy with a machine in about 40 bighas of land in Kamal Rural Municipality-6 alone this time.

According to Prem Pokharel, the agricultural technician of the rural municipality, they asked as many farmers as possible to plant rice with machine, but only a few farmers showed interest in it.

Farmers who have been farming traditionally will not be ready to use machines easily, he said.

However, he said that the use of machinery was more this year than last year.