Planting
By Abdullahi Shugaba
Dutse, May 10, 2018 (NAN) Farmers in Jigawa have started preparations for a new farming season after the first major rainfall which occurred in many towns and villages across the state.
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the state witnessed a downpour around midnight on Wednesday.
A NAN reporter, who monitored the situation in some farming communities on Thursday, reports that farmers responded instantaneously to the midnight rain by preparing their farmlands for cultivation.
While many of them were seen tilling the ground, others were applying dung and other organic manure to the ploughed lands.
A cross-section of farmers in the communities said that the rain was heavy enough to wet the soil for them to start ground tilling and begin cultivation.
Alhaji Musa Babannan, a farmer in Kachi village near Dutse, who thanked God for the rain, said: “We are grateful to God because farmers can now begin the new planting season.”
Also speaking, Malam Abdu Mati of Sintilmawa community, Ringim Local Government Area, also said that farmers in the area could now begin crop planting, following the rainfall.
“People of our community are predominantly dry-season and rainy-season farmers; so with the heavy rainfall, we can now shift from dry season to rainy season farming,” he said.
Another farmer, Alhaji Aminu Muhammad, in Taura, headquarters of Taura Local Government Area, said that the rain not only signalled the onset of rainy-season farming, it would also help in abating the scorching heat in the neighbourhood.
“In view of the intense heat, many people sleep outside their houses but with the rain, we now have some relief,’’ he added. (NAN)
AIS/USO/OOK
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