Farmers apprised of straw mgmt machines

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, October 13

In order to apprise the farmers about the in-situ management of the paddy straw, the Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Department, Jalandhar, on Sunday organised a field day camp at Goal Pind village, block Adampur, to sensitise the farmers against the paddy straw burning menace.

In this camp, various in-situ machines which could be used for the management of paddy straw were displayed. The combines fitted with "Straw Management System" (SMS) successfully worked in the fields of farmer Amarjit Singh. On the occasion, joint director engineering of agriculture department Manmohan Kalia asked farmers that harvesting paddy with the use of SMS fitted combine would make the in-situ process very easy. He said that with additional use of only two to three litre diesel per acre than non-SMS combines, farmers could also run this type of SMS fitted combines.

He also said that the grain loss or broken grain as claimed by some elements was totally wrong adding that the state government had totally banned the combines without SMS. He asked the farmers to in-situ manage the paddy straw and the small and marginal farmers could hire the needful machines from cooperative society or various machineries sewa centre established with government subsidy. Kalia also apprised the potato growers of the area to use mulchor or chhoper shredder for sowing of potato after harvesting paddy with SMS fitted combines. He advised farmers to purchase in-situ machineries under current year subsidy programme up to October 20 and submit their bill to the concerned agric office immediately. The various farmers of the area were present on the spot. The team also visited Reru village and Bulandpur for verification of machineries purchased under subsidy of farmers group.

Kalia advised wheat growers to use happy seeder technology for wheat sowing. He said after running combines with SMS the sowing wheat seed with happy seeder would not only boost the fertility status of soil but through this process less infestation of weeds was felt in such fields and also irrigation needs of such wheat crops was comparatively less.