Rejoinder & our reply
In a statement, Md Humayun Kabir, upazila agriculture officer (UAO) of Dimla under Nilphamari district protested a report titled "Blast attack worries Nilphamari boro farmers" published in The Daily Star on April 11, 2017.
He claimed the report is 'not true' and 'baseless'.
The statement says, in the beginning of the month, the weather became too adverse with hot day, cold night, deep fog, dewy morning, cloudy sky and drizzling, which are favourable for spreading blast disease in paddy.
As hybrid varieties BRRI-28 and BRRI-29 are too sensitive to the fungus, deputy assistant agriculture officials in different block offices in the upazila, from the beginning, advised farmers to use different types of fungicide in certain doses. For those initiatives, the fungal attack remained under control.
Farmer Md Zakir Islam Shiblu, whose name was mentioned in the report, used less than the suggested doses of fungicide in his field.
Later as per the advice of the officials, he sprayed prescribed dose of the fungicide, took other measures and was able to control the fungal attack.
On the other hand, it is not true that fungicide did not work in Alamgir Hossain's field.
The disease in Alamgir's field remained under control due to using the prescribed dose of fungicide, said the statement.
OUR REPLY
The rejoinder signed by Dimla UAO on April 13, 2017 mentioned that blast disease affected paddy fields in the area due to some adverse atmospheric factors.
He had also told the same to this correspondent before filing of the report and the information was included in the news item as his quotation.
Regarding farmers' complaint that the antidotes were not working well to combat the disease, The Daily Star correspondent talked to the deputy director (DD) of the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) in Nilphamari district at time of preparing the news item.
The DD, GM Idris told this correspondent over cell phone that the use of improper doses of fungicide (medicine) by farmers was responsible for not getting the desired result.
DD's version along with his name was also published in the same news.
The UAO in his rejoinder claimed that the disease is under control and this correspondent in his news mentioned the same opinion quoting the DD as he had also claimed the same.
The story was prepared after talking to a number of farmers as well as local elites and the names of many of them could not be mentioned due to space constraint.
This correspondent has no contradiction with the UAO regarding the case of farmer Zakirul Islam Shiblu as the information provided in the report, regarding use of proper doses of fungicides to control the disease, is almost similar to that of the UAO's protest letter.
The extent of the disease was ascertained as per farmers' general opinion and random observation of the correspondent.
The aim of the report was to draw attention of the higher authorities to address the problem as soon as possible for greater interest of the farmers and the country as well.
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