Agartala, Jul 13, 2022, TRIPURATIMES Desk

Agartala, July 13: The Tripura State Unit of the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) on Wednesday sought an urgent intervention of the department of agriculture to end the ‘rising’ human-animal conflict and rescue farmers from the crisis.

Addressing a press conference on Wednesday veteran CPI-M leader Pabitra Kar said, “After human-elephant, the man-monkey conflicts are posing serious threat to the agricultural farming across the state and the farmers are reeling under acute crisis.”

“Infestation of money is rising mainly in Teliamura, Udaipur and Belonia, where the farmers are facing serious hurdles as vast areas of vegetable farming are being damaged. In view of this there is an urgent need to execute the scheme of planting mango, jackfruit and other fruit trees in the jungle areas so as to restrict the infestation of monkeys in the human habitation,” Kar said.

He said, “Government has even failed to restrict the infestation of jumbos mainly in Atharamura hill range. In this case, the government needs to make adequate arrangements of food for the wild elephants which are often seen entering human habitations and damaging agricultural crops.”

“Not only the forest department, but also the state agriculture department are required to make a joint effort to preserve our forest and agricultural farming and crops,” Kar stated, adding that the director of agriculture had agreed to the demands of the AIKS delegation during the meeting on Tuesday last.

He also alleged of farmers’ crisis and said, “Our farmers are being deprived from government support in every field starting from their farming till procurement of paddies from the farmers.”

“We met the director of agriculture and sought the intervention of his department over maximizing the supply of chemical fertilizers, pesticides to the farmers. Now that organic fertilizers like cow dung are being used at large in Gaja cultivation, there is an acute crisis of such fertilizers, and farmers are dependent on chemical fertilizers which also seems to be in crisis,” he stated.

He said, “Government needs to make adequate arrangements of irrigation facilities for the farmers. Apart from this, there is also a need to set up paddy procurement centres in the ADC areas of the state.”