Farmers worried over borer affecting Bengal gram

 After having lost the onion crops during the monsoon the farmers of Ajjampura and Shivani area, keeping their hope of having good yield this year alive and ventured into growing rabi crops like Bengal gram and Jowar this year.

Unfortunately, even this crop is facing lots of problems due to the cyclone. Bengal gram are grown in both of these hoblis in large scale. Seeds are sown from end of October to first week of November.

This year the crops are dying due to excess moisture as rains have been lashing over the region even during November end.
Further borer worms too have infested the farm land destroying large quantity of crops.
“We used to spray medicines to plants after 20 days of germination. If the cloudy weather continues, then we may have to spray medicines once in 10 days, which means we have to worry about financial part of it as spraying medicines costs not less then Rs 1000 per acre,”says a worried farmer.

He says that if the weather does not change then growing bengal gram will be difficult and adds that though there are a range of medicines available in the market to overcome the worm problems, farmers are not in a position to buy them due to financial crunch.
The farmers have not yet given up. They say that bengal gram can grow well in cold weather.

Hence pinning their hope on good winter season, these farmers are trying to get over their experiences of onion crop and reap good bengal gram for their survival.