Bhadrapur. It has been 15 years since local farmer Umashankar Ganesh, who is also an executive member of Kachankawal Rural Municipality, stopped cultivating wheat. He says that at that time, due to the inconvenience of irrigation, low production, and mainly because wild elephants damaged the wheat crop, they started cultivating maize as an alternative to wheat.
‘It was difficult to protect the wheat crop as wild elephants would eat it as grass.’ Recalling those days, local farmer Ganesh said, ‘Since we started cultivating maize, the production has also been higher compared to wheat, and even wild elephants have caused less damage.’
If there is irrigation facilities and ample use of cow dung fertilizer, up to one metric ton of maize can be produced in one bigha of area, he informed. He says that since he started cultivating maize under the zero tillage program with the help of the Agricultural Knowledge Center Jhapa this year, the cost has decreased.
Prem Acharya, a farmer from Bhangwari, Arjundhara Municipality-4, has not cultivated wheat for 10 years. He says that he started cultivating mustard and maize because he can cultivate two crops during the wheat ripening season in winter. He said that he stopped cultivating wheat because he can cultivate two crops in the same season and also earn good income.
The area of land under wheat production in Jhapa has been decreasing in recent years. Chetraj Bhandari, information officer at the Agricultural Knowledge Center, said that wheat production and area are decreasing after farmers here chose other winter crops instead of wheat.
According to him, wheat was cultivated on 4,500 hectares of land in the fiscal year 2079/80, but this has increased to 3,000 hectares in the fiscal year 2080/81.
According to the statistics of the Knowledge Center, the area under maize cultivation has reached 44,350 hectares in the fiscal year 2080/81. Information officer Bhandari said that farmers are reluctant to cultivate wheat as maize and other crops are more profitable than wheat.
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