Punjab News Express
CHANDIGARH: Punjab Agriculture Department has blamed the farmers for wide spread attack of 'white fly' pest on their cotton crop and those farmers who failed to follow the guidelines of department have been suffering the most.
Punjab Government is facing wrath of farmers for supply of spurious pesticides in the market that led to attack of 'white fly' pest on the cotton crop in entire Malwa belt. The Agriculture department has claimed that excessive use of pesticides is mainly responsible for outbreak of 'white fly'.
An official spokesman said in a statement here that the farmers following the recommendations of Punjab Agriculture Department are still having bumper cotton crop in their fields. There are several farmers who always follow the recommendations of Agriculture Department and stay in constant touch with experts, which leads to bumper crop and huge profits. The department claimed that they have supplied good quality pesticides to farmers. The spokesman however is silent on fake pesticides circulated in the market in large quantity.
Dr Mangal Singh, Director, Agriculture Department, Punjab, said that the farmers following recommendations by their department reap huge profits because their recommendations are issued after several years of experiments. He said that for saving cotton crop from white fly, the farmers should not indulge in excessive use of pesticides, should spray during morning or evening, should use only recommended pesticides and should give full irrigation water to crops.
The department said that one such farmer Jagjit Singh Johar of village Chibranwali, who is having a bumper cotton crop in five acres of his fields, said that he has always followed the recommendations of Punjab Agriculture Department and never uses excess pesticides in his fields. He informed that he sprayed Obran, Dotara and a Neem based pesticides on his crop twice each and these were recommended by the Agriculture Department. He said that for bumper crops, all farmers should adopt Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in their fields and should never fall prey to excessive use of pesticides/insecticides.
The official spokesman stated that another farmer Rajwinder Singh of Bhagsar village told them that as per the recommendations of the Punjab Agriculture Department, he sprayed Obran, Dotara and Trizophas on his 12 acres of crop. He informed that he sprays these insecticides either in the morning or evening and due to which his crop has not been affected by the white fly. He also thanked the Agriculture Department for arranging the pesticides/insecticides on subsidised rates.
Similarly, Mahinder Singh of the same village with 8-acre of crop said that if the farmers don’t mix pesticides with each other, it could be very beneficial. He said that whenever he sprays the pesticides on his own crop, he also sprays it on the boundary of his neighboring farmer so that there is no attack of white fly on his crop and it has shown positive results, the agri officials said.