Rain spells trouble for wheat farmers

Tribune Reporters

Moga/Jalandhar/Ludhiana, April 20

Thousands of tonnes of wheat got soaked in the untimely rain in grain markets across the state, bringing to fore the poor arrangements in mandis and adding to the woes of the farmers.

Fields submerged

Wheat growers are already struggling as harvesting got delayed due to Covid-19. Now, the untimely downpour has added to our woes. Fields are submerged. So, harvesting machines can’t be taken to the fields. —Damanvir Singh, A Farmer

They fear two things: one, the quality of the produce will deteriorate because of the moisture in the grains and, two, the harvesting will be delayed further.

Damanvir Singh, a farmer from Phillaur, said: “Wheat growers are already struggling with delayed harvesting because of Covid-19. The untimely downpour has added to our woes. Fields are submerged. So, harvestingmachines cannot enter the fields.

Jalandhar Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) president Amrik Singh, who had sown the staple rabi crop on his 55 acres, said he had suffered a loss of more than 20 per cent.

“Some grains came off because of strong winds and some blackened because of accumulated water, deteriorating the quality of the produce,” he said, adding that the grain market in Jalandhar lacked enough tarpaulins to cover the entire produce.

Refuting his claim, Davinder Singh Kainth, mandi board officer in Jalandhar, claimed the board had made enough arrangements in mandis to save the produce; the losses were reported only from the fields, he added.

In Moga, farmers demanded that the state government must allow relaxation in purchase norms, or else they feared harassment at the hand of procurement agencies and commission agents.

“Farmers are already facing problems in bringing the produce to grain markets in a phased manner because of the Covid lockdown. If procurement norms are not relaxed, problems are likely to rise,” a farmer from Moga said.

Caught in a tight spot, farmers now cannot harvest the crop for a few days. “There is no hope that harvesting will commence in the next few days,” said Surjit Singh, a farmer at the Moga grain market on Monday.

Jinder Singh, a marginal farmer from Ludhiana’s Gorchiyan Kadarbaksh village, said: “The moment it started to rain, I rushed towards my fields only to see flattened crop. At least for the next 10 days, the crop cannot be harvested. The government must compensate us otherwise we will be ruined.”

Ajay Sood, a farmer from Moga’s Saleena village, said: “There is no option but to stop harvesting the crop as fields are inundated. It will be impossible to run combine harvesters.” More worrying for farmers is the rain forecast for the next 48 hours.