TAXILA: A bumpy wheat crop has given new hopes of financial benefits to the farmers. The harvesting of about 98pc wheat has completed in Taxila and adjourning areas of the Potohar region.

According to data obtained from the agriculture department, the total cultivated area in Taxila is 40,697 acres 4,876 acres irrigated and the remaining Barani (rain fed).

The department said the areas fed by both rain and tubewells had produced a high yield of wheat for the third consecutive year.

In various parts of the rural areas, farmers were seen harvesting and at the same time threshing the crop.

A few big farmers have their own threshing machines while about 90pc of small growers hired machinery to ensure timely com-pletion of the process.

Talking to this reporter, a number of farmers said they were happy over the bumpy crop.

They expressed the hope that it would remove their economic worries caused by the low production in successive years due to different reasons such as no timely rain, unfavourable weather conditions, unavailability or high cost of fertiliser and poor insecticides.

Malik Aziz said this year farmers remained successful in enhancing their wheat yield from 24 maund per acre to 30 maund per acre.

Tahir Suleman said farmers were happy because of the huge wheat production as timely rains allowed for maximum yield and profit.

`The increased profit will enable us to purchase modern machinery such as tractors which would further improve the production of the crops in the future.Ali Asghar Awan, the chairman of the district agriculture committee, said a high yield was witnessed not only in Taxila but the entire Potohar region.

However, some farmers complained that unavailability of machinery used to separate grain from husk was damaging the harvested crop forcing the farmers to hire the services of private threshing outlets.

When contacted, Deputy District Officer (agriculture) Tahir Mehmood said the area had produced a bumper wheat crop and the average yield target had been achieved.

He said farmers should complete threshing before the next spell of rains. Currently, there is an ideal sunshine and heat.

He said a comprehensive campaign had been launched for creating awareness among the farmers about packages provided by the government and innovations in the farm sector.