LAHORE, March 25: Farmers from the central Punjab apprehend that recent wet spells may affect final wheat yield.

In addition to the wheat crop, kinno orchards in Sargodha division have also `sustained heavy damage’. Although the alternate bearing factor has substantially reduced the kinno crop, the rain spells have damaged the last picking, which normally lasts up to mid-April.

Farmers say that the wet spells have brought an early end to the kinno season. It will further affect kinno export, which is already much below the last year’s figure of 200,000 tons.

The third crop which faces a certain risk is that of gram.

According to gram growers of Thal area, they have been expecting a bumper crop until rains started, damaging their crop badly. It will be the second successive year for low gram production, they say.

Muhammad Idrees of the Farmers Associate Pakistan (FAP) says that there may be some damage to the wheat crop in the rice belt (central Punjab).

“The effect is certainly damaging for individual farmers, but it is not that threatening for the national production target. Perhaps 30 per cent of the rice belt is affected to a varying degree due to the recent rains, but it hardly forms one per cent of the total acreage.”

According to Mr Idrees, if rains increase even three per cent production in the rest of the country, which they surely will, the damage in the rice belt will be negligible. But, it is no way to sound insensitive to those farmers whose crops have sustained damage owing to intermittent but heavy rains, he said.

Muhammad Hafiz, a kinno grower and exporter, says that rains have brought an early end to already bad season.

He says the kinno production has already dropped by 50 per cent this season due to what is known as alternate bearing (fluctuation in production every alternate year), but the rains drove proverbial last nail.

Farmers and exporters, he says, normally plan their season till mid-April, but rains ended the season by the third week of March.

“At present, most of factories dealing in kinno business are undergoing maintenance work after the end of the kinno crop. This year, export has also dropped by almost 50 per cent against the last year’s record 200,000 tons. This will negatively affect country’s exports and production targets,” he concluded.

The gram crop has suffered the most telling damage because of persistent rains this year, says Malik Ihsan Tiwana of Thal area.

Early rain spells brought happiness to farmers and all of them were expecting a bumper crop, but more rains took better of the crop, damaging it to the core, he regretted.—Ahmad Fraz Khan