Sow earlier to avoid losses during rainy season - Agri Minister tells rice farmers
Rice farmers during the May/June season last year suffered tremendous losses to their crop after their rice fields were severely flooded; thousands of acres of rice were still to be harvested.
Minister of Agriculture Zulfikar Mustapha in an invited comment said the ministry through NAREI, GRDB and the NDIA will work along with farmers to ensure they do not suffer during the wet season in 2022.
However, he said farmers will have to take advice and sow their crop earlier to avoid losses.
“This brings me back to the point where farmers will have to take advice too, because some of them went to sow in late last year and this is a result of the late sowing. We are in the rainy period,” he explained.
There are still 30,000 acres of rice to be harvested for this crop with Region Five accounting for the largest amount. According to the Minister 14,000 acres of rice have to be harvested in this region which is prone to flooding.
“We should have already harvested the entire crop because this crop we’ve sowed about 199,000 acres and we still have about 30,000 acres to reap,” Mustapha expressed.
Meanwhile, for other crops, there have been less losses.
“Most of them are planted at higher grounds, so all those things taken into consideration because of the flood that we suffered last year, many farmers would have heeded our advice, we are having less and less of those crops being lost now.”
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