It roughly makes about Rs 8500 to 17000 per acre, besides low quality grains and wheat straw:input costs added up.
Bumper crop means the farmers get between 22 and 24 quintal produce per acre besides three trollies of wheat straw.
Faridkot
The wheat season 2022-23 has been the worst for the wheat growers, not only in parts of Punjab, but across the northern part of India.
The repeated thunderstorms,hail and heavy rainfalls led to the logging of the crop in most parts, apart from causing complete damage by the hailstorms at places.
Though some of the farmers are content that at least they have got about 20 quintal of wheat per acre, but most said that there was a huge loss to the wheat crop.
The farmers said that the yield remained between 15 quintal and 20 quintal at most of the fields, while they had expected a bumper crop this year with 22 to 24 quintal yield per acre.
“I had expected that I would get about 24 quintal yield per acre, but it is now about 20 quintal. It has led me to a loss of about 4 quintal, which translates into Rs 8500 per acre,” said Jagseer Singh, a farmer from Behbal Khurd.
Jagseer is still fortunate enough to get this yield as his fields were not water logged.
Even some farmers were only able to get about 16 quintals per acre, leading to a loss to them of about 8 quintals, making about Rs 17000 per acre.
Besides it, the input costs of the farmers added up.
“Earlier, we had to pay Rs 1500 per acre for having the crop harvested,but this year, this cost would go up to Rs 2500. Earlier, machines used to harvest about 40 to 50 acres per day, while now the combine harvester hardly finishes work on less than 20 acres. In some fields, the harvesting operations are still not complete because the fields are wet and machines slip,” said Gurmeet Singh, a farmer from Faridkot village.
Besides it, the farmers are getting a loss of about 7 quintals of wheat straw, which makes about Rs 3500 per acre.
Dr Karanjeet Singh, chief agriculture officer Faridkot said that as per the assessment of his department, the farmers are getting about 17 to 18 quintal yield from per acre on an average.
“But in Faridkot, only a small area was completely damaged while most of the wheat crop fell flat, but did not get destroyed completely,” he said.
He said that if the temperatures remained normal but hail storms and thunderstorms did not occur, the farmers would have got bumper crops this season.
“But repeated rainfalls caused havoc and led to the decline in the yield of the crop,” said the CAO.