Standing crop bent by rain, Punjab farmers stare at loss – and a harvesting problem

“We are at present expecting the total crop yield loss on account of lodging at 10-15%,” a department official told The Indian Express.

But for farmers, the loss may not be limited to crop yields per se. For them, what matters is how much of even the reduced crop can be harvested using combines or manual labour.

Much of the wheat (and paddy) grown in Punjab is harvested by combines. This time round, however, intermittent heavy rain and strong winds – from March 17 to April 3 – have led to lodging of the crop that had almost completed grain-filling and was due for harvesting from the first week of April. This lodged crop cannot easily be harvested now using combines.

“The normal wheat crop stands tall at 3-3.5 feet and the combine harvests the grain from the top 7-8 inches. But with the lodged plants, it will have to pick closer to the ground, which translates into loss of straw. It means that much less bhusa (dry fodder) costing Rs 7-8/kg for our animals,” Bhupinder Singh, a farmer from Longowal village in Sangrur district.

He has decided to harvest his entire crop on four acres – 25% of which has lodged – using manual labour. “Since the combine has to operate at least half-a-feet above the ground, it cannot also harvest the grain from my crop that is lying flat on the field,” he said.

Manual labour will cost more – Rs 4,500/acre for harvesting and Rs 3,000/acre for threshing (separating grain from straw). This is as against Rs 2,000-2,200/acre on combines, which harvest and thresh the grain in a single go.

Kuldeep Singh, a farmer from Ugrahan village of Sangrur’s Sunam tehsil, is aware that a combine can harvest only half of the grains on his four-acres of wheat, which has suffered 40% lodging.

Also, he would be able to harvest only one trolley (8 quintals) of bhusa per acre, against two trolleys in the normal course: “But I cannot afford to pay so much for manual labour. I have no option but to rely on combines, even if they give less grain and bhusa this time”.

While higher grain and straw recovery from lodged crops are reason enough for manual harvesting to make a comeback, the high cost and shortage of labour may still force farmers to go with combines. Effectively, it means that not all the wheat crop produced in the field will get harvested and sold.

Harmail Singh, a combine harvester owner from Sunam, said that usually they cut half feet stubble from above to collect wheat grain but in case of a flat crop they need to cut around the entire straw nearly 6 inches above the earth.

“Our blades can cut only six inches above the ground. The grains lying below that level cannot be picked up by our machines, which could result in 30-40% harvest loss,” admitted Harmail Singh, a combine owner from Sunam.

Pargat Singh, a farmer from Gehri Baghi village in Bathinda district who also runs a ‘Crops Information’ channel on YouTube with 432,000 subscribers, summed up the current situation: “By harvesting their lodged crop using combines, farmers will lose around 5 quintals per acre. But by going for manual harvesting, they will end up paying 3-4 times more.”