Rainy season without rain

This correspondent during a visit to some areas saw farmers pumping groundwater to fields with shallow irrigation machines. Many a poor farmers said they can not even rot harvested jute plants for lack of water in canals, ditches and other small waterbodies.

A drought-like situation is prevailing in the ten south-western districts because of scanty rainfall, farmers said. Black clouds often appear in the sky raising hopes, but those do not burst, they lamented.

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Agriculture Extension Department (AED) sources said they fixed a target to bring 7,07900 hectares of land under Aman cultivation in the ten districts to produce 16, 22, 690 tonnes of paddy in the current season. Transplantation of seedlings is fully dependent on rain, but the weather is behaving erratic, they said.

At places, farmers said they had problem also in preparing seedbeds due to lack of rain.

This correspondent traveled a long way on a motorbike. At Majdia village in Kaligonj upazila in Jhenidah district, farmer Mohiuddin was seen irrigating a land to transplant Aman seedlings.

Nur Islam and Moshiur Rahman of Kandia village in Jessore Sadar upazila were also seen irrigating their lands with shallow machines. Such scenes were in neighbouring Natnapara village.

Sadek Ali at Natnapara village said, "It will take Tk 70 to 80 for irrigating one bigha of land. If there is no sufficient rainfall, each farmer will have to spend additional Tk 800 to 1000 per bigha to cultivate Aman".