Jalandhar, September 27: Stubble management is likely to pose a major challenge for Punjab as the heavy rain that lashed the state over the past few days is set to delay harvesting of paddy by around a week to 10 days. Over 200 lakh tonnes paddy stubble is produced in Punjab every year. There is just 20-25 days window between paddy harvesting and wheat sowing in Punjab and delay in harvesting would lessen this period to almost half.
Main paddy crop in state is generally harvested between October 1 to October 25 while ideal time of wheat sowing is from November 1 to November 15.
This year Punjab government had launched a massive drive to motivate farmers against burning paddy stubble. While there is proposal to provide stubble management machines to the farmers on subsidy, experts said that still this machinery is not as sufficient as that it can not cover entire Punjab’s rice area in just 10-12 days.
“Already we are going to face yield and quality loss in paddy crop due to heavy lodging and stagnation of excessive rain in the paddy fields and now we cannot take the risk of late sowing of wheat due to late paddy harvesting. We will sow the wheat on time after paddy harvesting even if it requires burning of stubble,” said farmer Gurmail Singh of Nangal Shama village in Jalandhar, adding that perfect period for wheat sowing is between November 1 to 15, and sowing after it leads to yield loss upto 1-2 quintals per acre.
“If rain water does stand in the crop for long then the harvesting will not be completed before the end of October month,” said farmer Davinder Singh of Paras Ram village, who had sown PR-126 on his 5-acres, adding that it will led a loss of around one to 1.5 quintals per acre. “We would like to sow wheat on time to stop the yield loss in the next crop,” he added.
“This year the sowing of paddy was delayed for five days from June 15 to June 20 and now untimely rain is delaying the harvesting of paddy, which would not be harvested before the end of October month and farmers would not have the much time to manage the stubble,” said General Secretary, Bhartiya Kisan Union (Dakunda), Jagmohan Singh.
Sukhdev Singh Kokrikalan, General Secretary of BKU (Ugrahan) said that they had opposed the late sowing of paddy this year just because the farmers will not get the time to manage the stubble. “Farmers do not want to burn stubble as they themselves suffer the most,” he said.
Dr Jasbir Singh Bains, Director, Punjab Agriculture Department, said that due to rain harvesting will be delayed in Punjab at least by a week, leaving lesst time for managing stubble and timely sowing of wheat.
