Boro farmers’ hopes dashed by drought, pest attack

A drought like situation and untimely cold wave, which induced pest attack and outbreak of blast disease, are severely impacting Boro paddy fields in Sylhet region, especially in Sunamganj district, causing extreme worry for several thousand farmers.
Under the impact of the dry spell, lands of paddy fields have already become arid in many areas.

Already 10 per cent of Boro paddy in Shantiganj upazila has been almost fully damaged in absence of rain this time, said a number of farmers of the upazila, where 22,612 hectares of land were brought under Boro cultivation this year.

Majra poka, a kind of pest, and blast disease are inflicting severe damage on the paddy plants making the farmers hopeless.

Due to lack of irrigation facilities and absence of natural source of water, a vast tract of land has remained uncultivated in Sunamganj and Sylhet and Moulvibazar districts for various reasons this year.

Sources at the Sylhet divisional office of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) said a total of 276,803 hectares of land in the haor region were brought under Boro farming this season while in the non-haor region it was 220,416 hectares.

Against the total 497,219 hectares, target of the total yield is set at 2050,201 tonnes in Sylhet division.

An official at the DAE said the farmers here had been in trouble amid a drought like situation with paddy on over 18,000 acres of land in various large haors numbering 23 in Tahirpur upazila only. The natural sources of water have already run dry while the whole region lacks irrigation facilities.

The major Boro producing haor areas in Tahirpur upazila include Matian, Mohalia, Angaruli, Gurma and Halie haor, where there is a lack irrigation tools of any type.
Farmers are totally dependent on natural sources of water for the lone crop. They said paddy plants are now turning red due to dryness.

A farmer of Govindrsri, who had transplanted high yielding variety of Boro paddy on 12 acres of land, said, “Hopes are about to go.”
The man sunk an irrigation pump three years ago, but could not irrigate the whole season due to fall in groundwater level.

An official at the upazila agriculture office said a target was set to produce 90,448 tonnes of paddy worth Tk2.83billion (Tk 283 crore) in the upazila. But nothing can be said yet about the farmers’ fate due to the drought like situation.

Contacted, Additional Director of the DAE, Sylhet division Bimol Chandra Shome told this correspondent that all the 40 upazila officials were instructed to stand by the affected farmers amid the prevailing drought like situation.

“The situation is not that critical yet,” he said, adding, “We hope rain will occur in two to three days, for which the farmers had been waiting. Basically the Sylhet region is far behind in irrigation for various reasons. That is why they have to depend on the nature.