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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Odisha farmer suicides: 'Pesticides failed to kill pests, they killed my father' - Debabrata Mohanty

Odisha farmer suicides: 'Pesticides failed to kill pests, they killed my father' - Debabrata Mohanty

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published Published on Nov 6, 2017   modified Modified on Nov 6, 2017
-Hindustan Times

Brown planthoppers have been particularly pestilent in the kharif season this year. Distressed farmers from the nine affected districts in Odisha are setting fire to their destroyed crops.

Bargarh:
Landless farmer Brunda Sahoo’s hopes soared early October when he saw lush green paddy crop standing on 15 acres he cultivated as a sharecropper. He told his family they could repair their house and marry off his daughter after selling the harvest.

But then a swarm of brown planthoppers struck. The green leaves turned orange-yellow. Sahoo, 51, tried fighting the insects, known to feed on rice plants, with pesticides. It didn’t work.

Soon, the leaves were brown and plants bone dry, signalling the onset of hopper burn, a condition that kills the plant as the insect sucks the sap.

Sahoo knew his crop had no chance against the pest and neither did he.

On October 31, he set fire to his wasted crop at Kalapani village in Bargarh district, about 350km northwest of Odisha capital Bhubaneswar.

According to his family, it was a debt-ridden farmer’s desperate bid to catch the government’s attention. The next day, Sahoo drank poison and died while being taken to hospital.

Farmers Alaya Jena of Sanakhemundi block in Ganjam district and P Nabin Kumar of Nuakhairpali village in Bargarh have done the same since then, unable to fend off the brown planthopper that Odisha farmers call Matia Gundi (brown insect that reduces crops to dust).

Jena died on Sunday, the fourth Odisha farmer driven to suicide this year by a pest attack.

On October 25, chief minister Naveen Patnaik announced a drought relief package for farmers in 15 of the state’s 30 districts. There was no mention of crops ravaged by pests.

On Sunday, the government acknowledged pests had hit crops in nearly 1.78 lakh hectares (1 hectare = 2.47 acre) across nine districts.

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Hindustan Times, 6 November, 2017, http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/odisha-farmer-suicides-pesticides-failed-to-kill-pests-they-killed-my-father/story-wnlGUkUCFLB07O1UgZktUI.html


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