Owing to the low paddy yield this year, farmers in South Kashmir are worried as many families earn their livelihood from the produce.
Farmers from different areas of South Kashmir while talking with the news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO) said that this year the yield is very low as compared to the last few years as the produce was full of diseases.
Mohammad Maqbool, a farmer from Lassipora area of Pulwama, said that the crop usually gets ready in the second fortnight of September, “but this year’s crop wasn’t ready even months after its usual time.”
“At time of threshing, we are witnessing very low yield this year due to which farmers are very much worried as thousands of families depend directly on paddy,” he said.
Subzar Ahmad, another farmer from Anantnag said that many farmers haven’t threshed their crop this year.
Subzar said that blasts and brown spot diseases were prevalent for the last few years but this year the effect of such diseases was very high.
Farmers from Awantipora, Tral, Pampore, Kakapora, Litter, Watchi and other areas of South Kashmir also expressed the same concern following the low produce of crop this year.
Experts believe that the less rain is the main reason for the low crop production this year.
Meanwhile, officials said that despite dozens of awareness camps, farmers are still sticking to old traditional varieties.
“Farmers must change varieties after every five to seven years but it isn’t happening on ground,” they said—(KNO)