State set for bumper wheat harvest

Aman Sood
Tribune News Service
Patiala, March 19

Despite inclement weather conditions in the past two months, which saw rain spells every week, farmers of the state are set to reap a bumper harvest of wheat this year due to changed sowing practices.

The preliminary report prepared by the state Agriculture Department has stated that the state is expected to get a bumper wheat crop that is likely to break all previous records.

As per Agriculture Department data, wheat is sown in 88 lakh acres of land in the state and this year, the productivity of wheat is expected to be about 51 tonnes per hectare as compared to 48 tonnes last year. The total production of wheat in Punjab will be about 180 lakh tonnes, which will be a record of sorts.

“The state government had taken a major policy initiative this year for direct sowing of wheat without burning the crop residue of earlier rice crop. About 70 per cent of farmers sowed the wheat crop with new technology and the condition of the crop in such fields is excellent,” said Secretary, Agriculture, Kahan Singh Pannu.

Officials of the department said there was no report of any disease or pest outbreak on the wheat crop. They said the growth of crop was excellent as a majority of the farmers had adopted the new technology of management of paddy residue in the fields without resorting to burning practices. “This not only resulted in abatement of pollution level in early winter months but also improved organic matter in the soil which created excellent conditions for better root growth of the wheat crop,” said an official.

Experts said good weather with prolonged winter and timely rain further helped the wheat grain to mature fully. The wheat crop sown in the farms where crop residue was left in the fields to decompose over a period of time will give more than one quintal more yield than the fields where paddy residue was set on fire. The need for fertilisers and weedicides also got reduced in such fields, they said.

“It is estimated that over 132 lakh tonnes of wheat would arrive in the grain markets of the state against last year’s 128 lakh tonnes,” said Pannu.

JS Garcha, a farmer from Doraha, who did not resort to stubble burning, said, “I think the yield will be high and even the crop quality is good.”