Problems Faced by Farmers in Direct Seeded Rice-A Case Study

The study was conducted in Dhulkot village of Sri Muktsar Sahib District of Punjab. A total of 100 farmers who were practicing (60) and who had discontinued (40) DSR in village Dhulkot were selected as respondents. An interview schedule was designed and data was collected through personal interview approach. In year 2015, the DSR cultivation was on peak in the village when 100 farmers were growing DSR on 323 hectares. Whereas, in study year 2016 the area under direct seeded rice declined to 121 hectares and number of farmers were 60. There were many reasons which cause the discontinuance of direct seeded rice like infestation of weeds, non-availability of DSR drill and germination failure. More infestation of weeds as compared to puddled rice was the main problem as 90.0 percent of respondents had faced this problem. Other problems include more expenditure on herbicides (88.33percent) and difficulty in weed management (86.67percent), Iron deficiency (83.33percent), non-availability of labour (80.0percent) for hand hoeing, difficulty in maintaining proper seed depth of seed (60.00percent), occurrence of rain at early stage of sowing (53.33percent). In addition to these, there were some other problems which were faced by relatively less number of respondents included off type plants or variety mixture in crop (20.0percent), non-availability of seed drill (13.33 percent) and non-availability of short duration varieties (6.66 percent).