With the harvest of Boro paddy already facing severe inconvenience as labourers vanished from the scene during the ensuing lockdown, cyclone Amphan may extensively damage the yield lying unclaimed on thousands of acres of farmlands across the state.

Burdwan (East), Birbhum, Nadia and Hooghly register the highest productivity and account for about 27 per cent rice acreage and 32 per cent Bengal’s production. The unprecedented lockdown incidentally has hit harvesting of Boro paddy as the farmers are not getting labourers to share the burden of bulk reaping nor can hire the giant harvesters as the machine operators are stranded in states like Punjab, Haryana.

Advertisement

The state, however, was set to deploy an odd brigade of 3,000 giant harvester machines that plan has come a cropper.

Chief Minister’s Agricultural Advisor, Pradip Majumdar said: “We have got 1380 harvester – rental outlets, but the machines are non-functional as their operators are not able to travel to Bengal from other states during the lockdown.”

Considering the plight of farmers across the country, Union Minister for Agriculture, Narendra Singh Tomar, held a video conference with officials on 7 April to review steps for facilitating farming activities during the lockdown and directed setting up control rooms for regular monitoring and stated that transport of farm produce and farming related products should not be hampered.

Centre also suggested that the operation of agencies engaged in procurement of agricultural products, farming operation by farmers and farm workers should be ensured during the lockdown. But, those remain ineffective as of yet. The labourers from other Green Zone districts like Bankura, Purulia, have stayed away from Burdwan( designated an orange zone), fearing Covid-19 infection.

Burdwan (East) – a significant paddy yielding district already suffered crop loss due to hailstorms in two consecutive days last week. Amphan – another cyclonic storm has started posing a new threat to the Boro paddy lying deserted in the fields.

“Our farmers cultivated Boro paddy on 1.70 lakh hectares and the last hailstorm damaged crop spread over 15,000 acres last week. Cyclone Amphen will arrive on 30 April with a speed of 70 kmph,” said Jagannath Chatterjee, Deputy Director of Agriculture for Burdwan (East). This, he added: ” will cause fresh crop damage in the South Bengal districts.”