No pre-monsoon shower,farmers stare at losses

Farmers in the state have been awaiting these showers since the beginning of this month,and their late arrival could result in a big loss to their crops and earnings.

“Pre-monsoon showers provide great relief to farmers. If there is no rain,farmers needs to run their tubewells to extract huge amounts of underground water,which would consume a great deal of power and increase the initial cost of the paddy production,” said Dr Naresh Gulati,Deputy Director,Agriculture Technology Management Agency (ATMA).

“We need to water our fields once every week during paddy season and for that we need to run our tubewells more then 12 hours a day to fill the entire fields with water,” said Amarjit Singh,a farmer from Adampur area.

“The government had promised to provide us eight hours of uninterrupted power supply but that is not happening,” said another farmer,adding that he needs to run his generators to irrigate his fields.

“Due to the extremely hot weather,even water gets evaporated soon from the fields and we need to keep filling it often,” said farmer Jagjit Singh from Nakodar.

According to the records of the agriculture department,Punjab usually witnesses a rainfall of between 30 mm to 45 mm in June.