VEHARI, July 27: The cotton crop in Vehari district is under a severe pest attack and farmers allege the Agriculture Department has no plans at hand to counter it, Dawn has learnt.

The pests damaging the crop on a vast area are: white fly, milli bug and cotton leaf curl virus (CLCV).

This correspondent visited a number of farms in Vehari, Burewala, Mailsi, Tibba Sultanpur, Machiwal, Jalla Jeem, Luddan and Ratta Tibba and saw hundreds of acres of cotton being eaten up by the deadly insects.

The district is famous for its good quality cotton the world over. It has been producing over 1.6 million cotton bales annually for the last many years. But the recent attack can bring a significant downfall to the yield, farmers say.

The attack is not new to this area, as the last year milli bug, white fly and the CLCV played havoc with the crop and bankrupted many farmers.

The damage caused by the pests this year is much higher than the last year, farmers in Ratta Tibba say.

They claimed fake pesticides, no guidance from agriculture experts and bad weather were the main causes of the pest attack.

They say excessive rains also triggered the attack regardless of the quality of seeds they had used.

About two years ago, the Punjab Agriculture Ministry formed a committee to stamp out the pest but researchers have failed to control the menace.

As farmers fear the worst in the coming days, Agricultural Department officials have not come out of their cosy offices with any remedies to rescue the farmers.

Farmers said that last year they had used pesticides recommended by the officials but got no relief as later the recommended pesticides turned out to less effective and in some cases fake.

They alleged that some department officials received commission from pesticide dealers for recommending their products to farmers.

District agriculture officer Ahmad Muneer Rana said that this year the pest attack was more severe than the last year due to excessive humidity and rains.

He suggested farmers used good quality pesticides to counter the insects besides weeding out unwanted plants from the fields. He claimed the Punjab Agriculture Ministry had formed a strategy to fight the pest attack.

He said the pest had attacked 20 to 25 per cent of the crop area. Another official said the pest could lash 40 to 45 per cent of the area in the district and adjoining areas.

Agriculture official Muhammad Tariq said the attack rate of white fly and milli bug increased day by day but the CLCV attack was not alarming in Vehari as it had attacked only Mailsi and Burewala. He claimed the CLCV was not dangerous and could be controlled.

Cotton experts Dr Sagheer Ahmed of the Research Station in Vehari, and Agriculture University of Faislabad’s Muhammad Adrees visited various farms in Vehari.

They said only three seed varieties were immune to the pest attack: IR-3701, BR-333 and 2H-260.

The department has set up 405 farmers’ field schools in 408 villages in the district. These schools were set up to devise solutions by “learning by doing” rules.

Mr Rana claimed the schools educated the farmers every day from 9am to 1pm. The farmers said they had yet to see any school functioning or the fruit of education imparted to farmers through these schools.

Growers contradicted the official statistics, saying that no Agriculture Department officials ever visited the fields to gather data or guide the farmers.

They said the officials visited the farms of political or influential figures and small farmers did not benefited from their services.

They demanded the government ensure supply of good quality pesticides against soft loans so that they could save their produce.