With rats ravaging aman paddy fields, Asaduzzaman, a farmer in Khoshna village of Saitara union in Chirirbandar upazila, Dinajpur, has had striking success with traps made from bamboo tubes, Dinajpur TV's agriculture desk reports. Poison baits and other costly methods had not worked, so he built the trap to save his own crop.
The method is simple. A little paddy is scattered inside a bamboo tube, and the trap is set in the field. Lured by the grain, a rat goes in and is caught. Asaduzzaman says he catches one to one and a half dozen rats a day on average. The upazila agriculture office has given him an award for his success.
Seeing how well the trap works, other farmers in the area have started using it. Local farmers say it costs far less than poison baits or chemical methods: a single bamboo pole and a little work are enough to make one.
According to the agriculture department, an adult rat destroys about 50 to 100 kilograms of food a year. Controlling rats with this eco-friendly local technique protects the crop and cuts much of the environmental harm that chemicals would cause.
The agriculture department is advising and helping farmers to take up the method more widely.
Photo: Kritzolina / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Dinajpur TV
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