Sunsari farmers fail to sow paddy

Itahari, July 30 (RSS): The farmers of Sunsari district have not been able to sow paddy on nearly half of their cultivable land for lack of rain.

Out of the total 74,541 hectares of arable land in the district, paddy has been cultivated only on 50 per cent of the 57,000 hectares of land on which paddy is cultivated.

The farmers have not been able to cultivate paddy even on the 39,000 hectares of irrigated land due to the drying up of the small rivulets in the district which are the main source of the Sunsari-Morang irrigation project and the district sector irrigation programme.

The paddy seedlings in the nurseries have started to wilt as many paddy nurseries have gone dry and the time for paddy cultivation is also nearing its end. The paddy output in Sunsari district is expected to decrease this year.

Cultivation has not been done on paddy fields in areas lying north of the main irrigation canal of the district. Some of the paddy fields which have been cultivated in areas south of the main irrigation canal also have started to dry up due to the lack of rain, district agriculture development officer Hem Sagar Gautam said.

Paddy production in the district is expected to decrease by 88,350 metric tonnes this year as half of the land remains to be cultivated and still there is no enough precipitation in the district.

Under normal conditions, 3.1 metric tonnes of paddy is produced in a hectare of land in Sunsari district.

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