Jhitki (Madhubani), April 27: The lush green patch of the budding garma (summer) paddy growing by the side of the golden brown wheat crop, ripe and ready for harvesting, is a picturesque site along the stretch of National Highway 57 from Madhubani to Supaul.

By its shade and appearance, the site epitomises the “rainbow revolution” that chief minister Nitish Kumar has been promising in the agriculture sector. But behind the green curtain lurk unease and growing discontent — and a message for Nitish.

Farmers are losing interest in the garma paddy because of the government’s “neglect” of the nascent crop.

“We have sown garma paddy this season only in half the cultivable area of what we had sown last year. We are still left with last year’s produce in our homes. It is hard to sell garma paddy even at the rate of Rs 500 per quintal. There are no takers for our crop,” lamented Maha Mandal, a farmer at Jhitki, the last village of Madhubani district linked to Nirmali bazaar in Supaul district.

In fact, garma is a new crop which the farmers of eight north-eastern Bihar districts learnt to cultivate from their counterparts in neighbouring North Dinajpur district of Bengal, Terai areas of Nepal besides the Bangladeshi refugees settled in the low lying and riverine belt on the Bihar-Bengal border, barely five to six years ago.

What lured the Bihar farmers to adopt the crop was its high yield, besides ensuring availability of foodgrain and cash in homes during the off-season. Garma paddy is sown in February-March and harvested in May. Thus, the farmers got paddy in their homes in between the rabi (sown in November/December and harvested in March/April) and kharif (sown in July and harvested in December/January) seasons.

When contacted, official sources in the agriculture department in Patna confirmed the farmers’ angst. “The state government has no policy to procure the garma paddy. The government treats garma as subsistence crop which is not considered as the crop for procurement,” said an officer.

But the farmers think differently. Residents of Jhitki, a large village with an adult population of 2,800 which cultivates garma paddy on about 2,000 acres of land, said they adopted the “high yield” crop from their neighbours in Bengal and Nepal to augment their income.

“But our dreams have shattered with the government not even aware of our efforts to bring the crop to Bihar,” said Awadhesh Prasad Sah, who had sown garma paddy on five acres of land taken on share-cropping. He pointed out that their produce was sold at throwaway prices to middlemen at Nirmali market. “We learned that the middlemen sell it to the cartels of Ambala and Amritsar who earn a huge profit on our produce by selling it at a high price,” Sah said.

The farmers are forced to sell to the middlemen as the procurement centres have steadfastly been refusing to buy their produce. “How can we entertain the garma paddy...it is not in the list of the yields to be procured,” said a procurement official at Nirmali in Supaul district, who did not want his name to be published.

Sources in the agriculture department said garma paddy was produced in an area of about one lakh hectares out of the total 80 lakh hectares of cultivable area in Bihar. It is produced primarily in Supaul, Saharsa, Katihar, Kishenganj, Madhepura and Purnea besides the low-lying areas of Madhubani and Darbhanga districts.

Farmers at Jhitki and Nirmali said garma crops yielded one quintal per cottah if cultivated properly. “It takes hard work and quite a sizeable investment. For instance, we have to irrigate it thrice for it grows in the rainless season. Of course, we have the river Kosi and its tributaries flowing around our fields. But it takes hard work to fetch the waters to the fields. Besides, we have to use fertiliser, the prices of which are sky-rocketing,” said farmer Birendra Kumar. “Had the government fixed the support price and were buying it, we would never have thought of stopping to produce it.”

Leader of Opposition in the Bihar Assembly, Abdul Bari Siddiqui, who represents Ali Nagar seat in Darbhanga district, said: “It is a very sad situation that the farmers are withdrawing from the high-yield crop. It is an example of the sheer lack of knowledge about the crop in the agriculture department.”