Kendrapara: Labour shortage in the district is hitting farmers badly. After facing problems due to unseasonal rains twice in recent days, the new problem for them is how to harvest their ripe crops with a few farmhands.
They are yet to start the crop cutting work in several areas. One can find ripe paddy lying in rainwater and getting rotten in many low-lying fields.
Take the case of 56-year-old Sridhar Pradhan, of Badabaranga. He is now a worried man: How to reap his three acres of kharif paddy from his fields as daily labourers are turning their backs to working in the muddy fields.
If the paddy is not harvested within a week, then the rainwater-soaked stems of the paddy plants would fall flat and its pinnacle would be damaged if the plants remain exposed to rainwater for days together. So, he is spending sleepless nights thinking how to harvest paddy, said Sridhar Pradhan.
Compelling factors like mounting labour cost and NFSA-sponsored ration card scheme has forced land owners to start crop cutting operations out of their own resources.
“How could we afford labour cost? It has gone up to Rs 350 to Rs 400 a day. They have to be provided two-time food a day and non-vegetarian food and a liquor bottle when they return from work. If their demands are not met, then they would skip work the next day,” Karunakar Tripathy, a poor farmer of Kadalibadi village, said.
Easy availability of rice at highly subsidised price has left the toiling sections complacent. Higher wages, liquor and non-vegetarian meals fail to enthuse labourers to work in the fields.
“Though we try alternatives to cut our paddy with machines, it has become a difficult task for a harvester to enter the muddy and rainwater-submerged farmlands. Meanwhile, the yields of ripe paddy have started falling whereas in low-lying fields, several paddy plants have fallen flat,” said farmers.
Hardly, the labourers are showing interest in field work like in the past as their daily needs are mostly met by rations. The laborious people, who used to spend most of their time in the agriculture fields, are now wasting their days in playing cards and consuming contraband items, said some farmers. Due to a sort of labour crisis, the farmers are forced to cut crops by engaging their family members.
According to Baula Mallick, a resident of Chakada Baranga village, “I have raised paddy in five acres of my land by borrowing money from a local women’s SHG and I have been paying interest for the borrowed money. But I face crop loss due to unseasonal rain as rainwater is still in my fields. Though I arranged labourers for cutting crop in my agriculture field by accepting all their demands, they skipped the work as they were not willing to get into the rainwater filled fields. So circumstances forced me and my family members to harvest paddy with our own resources and to dry and store it in a safe place as it is a question of our survival for a year.” PNN
