MAIZE FARMERS
DEMAND COMPENSATION FOR CROP FAILURE
Wednesday, 23 October 2013 | SUDHIR MISHRA
| BALANGIR | in Bhubaneswar
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Efforts of the Government to promote hybrid maize cultivation in Balangir district
suffered a setback as the crop cultivated by villagers of Upparjhar and
Nuanpali in Degoan block did not yield any harvest leaving the farmers to count
heavy loss.
The Agriculture Department had given us
JKMH-502 seeds in June last. While villagers of Nuanpali had cultivated it in
200 hectares, Upparjhar farmers had gone for 250 acres.
“There is hardly any seed in its fruit and
out of 100 maize plants in a field fruit has been yielded in barely 20 plants
and that too in small sizes,” said a farmer, adding that after the Aagriculture Department officials
were apprised of this, they advised the cultivators to wait for some more time.
“Earlier, we used to earn Rs 15,000 per
hectare from maize cultivation, but this year we have suffered huge loss, hence
we demand adequate compensation,” said another farmer.
“Earlier we had submitted our petition to
District Collector’s Grievance Cell but no action was taken,” he added.
Later, the farmers submitted a petition to Deputy Director of Agriculture demanding adequate
compensation for the crop loss.
“We have received a complaint from the
farmers of Nanupali and Upparjhar regarding poor performance of JK Agro Genetic
maize and crop failure.
The JK Agro Genetic was involved in Hybrid maize cultivation in the district
under Public-Private Partnership mode. The Maize JKMH-502 variety was cultivated in 1980 hectares, of
which poor performance was noticed in 980 hectares. This is characterized by
lanky growth of the crop, short height, early upcoming of reproductive phase
and poor grain filling. A total of 2,760 farmers have been affected due to
this. We have intimidated this to Director of Agriculture in October first
week,” said Deputy Director of Agriculture Manoranjan Mallick.
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