No Labour Amid Covid, Indian Farmers Use Machines In “Watershed Second”

Raipur Jattan/Singapore:

For greater than 20 years, farmer Ravindra Kajal cultivated rice the best way his forefathers had – each June he flooded his fields with water earlier than hiring a military of farmhands to plant paddy seedlings.

However a shortage of employees this 12 months due to the coronavirus pressured Mr Kajal to alter. He irrigated the sphere simply sufficient to moisten the soil and leased a drilling machine to instantly sow seeds on his 9-acre plot.

“Since I used to be greater than snug with the tried-and-tested method of rising rice, I opted for the brand new methodology with some trepidation,” mentioned Mr Kajal, 46, wanting over his area, inexperienced with rice saplings, in Raipur Jattan village in Haryana.

“However I’ve already saved round Rs 7,500 per acre as a result of I hardly spent on water and employees this 12 months,” he mentioned.

India is the world’s greatest exporter of rice and the world’s second-biggest producer after China. Throughout the nation’s grain bowl states of Haryana and neighbouring Punjab, hundreds of farmers like Mr Kajal have been pressured by the coronavirus to mechanise planting.

They’re nonetheless cautious of the expertise and overturning the time-honoured use of guide labour.

However Kahan Singh Pannu, Punjab’s Agriculture Secretary, is satisfied a historic change is underway that would dramatically improve India’s rice output, which in flip may affect world markets.

“It’s a minimum of a revolution in Indian agriculture,” he advised Reuters.

Authorities officers say the so-called direct seeding of rice (DSR) methodology may improve yields by about one-third and slash prices on employees and water.

The DSR machines enable farmers to develop greater than 30 saplings per sq. metre towards the same old 15 to 18 seedlings, mentioned Naresh Gulati, a state authorities farm official in Punjab.

Punjab is the house of the 1960s Inexperienced Revolution that led to a spike in crop yields. This 12 months, farmers there have used seed drilling machines to sow rice on greater than half one million hectares, a giant improve in contrast with lower than 50,000 hectares in 2019, growers and authorities officers mentioned.

Mr Pannu expects DSR use to leap once more subsequent 12 months.

“Increasingly more farmers are utilizing the DSR expertise which appears to be so promising that the complete 2.7 million hectares of Punjab’s rice space may come underneath it subsequent 12 months, which can be a watershed for India’s rice manufacturing,” he mentioned.

Avinash Kishore, a analysis fellow on the Washington-based Worldwide Meals Coverage Analysis Institute (IFPRI), mentioned if this 12 months’s crop was good, DSR can be the best way ahead. “The size of this 12 months’s shift to the DSR is a momentous change in rice cultivation in India,” he mentioned.

Sudhanshu Singh, a senior agronomist on the Worldwide Rice Analysis Institute within the Philippines, mentioned the shift to DSR was “one of many uncommon optimistic fallouts from COVID.”

Not one of the world’s main rice exporting nations – India, Vietnam and Thailand – makes vital use of seeding machines.

They’ve come into play in a giant method in India this 12 months as a result of tons of of hundreds of migrant labourers from Bihar and Jharkhand didn’t arrive within the northern grain belt for the 2020 planting season because of the coronavirus lockdown.

That pushed up the worth of native employees and made it extra economical for farmers to lease rice planting machines reasonably than pay for employed assist, mentioned Jaskaran Singh Mahal, a director on the Punjab Agricultural College.

Farm wages have gone up by Rs 1,500 an acre to about Rs four,500 this 12 months, and growers want round half a dozen employees to transplant rice paddy on a one acre plot.

As compared, farmers can rent planting machines for Rs 5,000 to Rs 6,000 per acre, which may cowl 25 to 30 acres in a day, rice growers mentioned.

“Apart from serving to us save on main overheads resembling water and labour, DSR is swift, not like the previous methodology which was tedious and time-consuming,” mentioned Devinder Singh Gill, a farmer in Punjab’s Moga district, well-known for its fragrant basmati rice.

The standard methodology requires farmers to sow seeds in nurseries after which look forward to 20 to 30 days earlier than manually transplanting the seedlings into plantation fields which might be ankle-deep in water.

Seeding machines enable farmers to bypass the nursery stage and plant straight into fields.

Water conservation is one other key attribute of DSR, which is essential in a principally dry, monsoon dependent nation like India.

Underneath the traditional methodology, three,000 to five,000 litres of water is utilized in India to supply 1 kg of rice – essentially the most water-thirsty crop – and DSR permits growers to chop water use by no less than 50 per cent to 60 per cent, farmers and authorities officers mentioned.

The principle problem for farmers utilizing direct seeding machines is managing weeds, which require the spraying of herbicides by the season.

Nonetheless, even factoring within the additional prices of those functions, the general value of cultivation is considerably decrease underneath DSR, mentioned Mr Kajal, the farmer in Haryana.

One other downside can be that if the strategy is adopted throughout the farm belt, there can be large unemployment within the jap states subsequent 12 months.

However farmers say they’ll wait to see the harvest in October earlier than deciding whether or not to stay with the expertise subsequent 12 months.

“The brand new expertise results in plenty of saving on account of water and labour, however the actual take a look at lies in productiveness and farmers won’t be totally satisfied until they see some rise of their yields,” mentioned Ashok Singh, a rice farmer.