The farmers following the recommendations of Punjab Agriculture Department are still having bumper cotton crop in their fields. There are several farmers who always follow the recommendations of Agriculture Department and stay in constant touch with experts, which leads to bumper crop and huge profits.One such farmer Jagjit Singh Johar of village Chibranwali, who is having a bumper cotton crop in five acres of his fields, said that he has always followed the recommendations of Punjab Agriculture Department and never uses excess pesticides in his fields. He informed that he sprayed Obran, Dotara and a Neem based pesticides on his crop twice each and these were recommended by the Agriculture Department. He said that for bumper crops, all farmers should adopt Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in their fields and should never fall prey to excessive use of pesticides/insecticides.
Rajwinder Singh of Bhagsar village said that as per the recommendations of the Punjab Agriculture Department, he sprayed Obran, Dotara and Trizophas on his 12 acres of crop. He informed that he sprays these insecticides either in the morning or evening and due to which his crop has not been affected by the white fly. He also thanked the Agriculture Department for arranging the pesticides/insecticides on subsidised rates.Similarly, Mahinder Singh of the same village with 8-acre of crop said that if the farmers don’t mix pesticides with each other, it could be very beneficial. He said that whenever he sprays the pesticides on his own crop, he also sprays it on the boundary of his neighboring farmer so that there is no attack of white fly on his crop and it has shown positive results.
Beant Singh, a farmer of same village with 5-acre landholding, said he has used pesticides as per the recommendations of agriculture department. He claimed that white fly has attacked the crop of farmers who used more of urea on their crops.
Dr Mangal Singh, Director, Agriculture Department, Punjab, said that the farmers following recommendations by their department reap huge profits because their recommendations are issued after several years of experiments. He said that for saving cotton crop from white fly, the farmers should not indulge in excessive use of pesticides, should spray during morning or evening, should use only recommended pesticides and should give full irrigation water to crops.District Agriculture Officer Dr Beant Singh said that the department has provided good quality pesticides to the farmers. He said that farmers who used it in right quantity and at the right time have benefited.Others present on the occasion included Dr Gagandeep Singh Mann, Sub Inspector Satinder Kumar, Assistant Technology Manager Gagandeep Singh, besides several others.