The people of Nangkor village of Shumar Gewog, Pema Gatshel grow maize twice a year, but they end up having to share their harvest with the wild boars.
The wild boars frequent the maize fields in the village and sometimes damage almost half of the crop.
With maize almost ready for harvest, farmers can be seen guarding their fields at night around this time of the year. Despite this, a farmer lost almost a half of his maize crop to the wild boars recently.
“We work really hard. We have to hire power tillers, which costs us Nu 2000 per day, to prepare the fields for maize plantation. We also have to hire workers and pay Nu 4000 in charges to them. After all these hard work, it is sad when the wild boars leave us with very little to reap,” Langten from Nangkor said.
The maize fields in the village are protected with bamboo fencing but it does little to help keep the wild boars away.
Solar fencing, they say, would do a better job.
“Solar fencing has come to the rescue of farmers in other villages. But in our case, we were told we may not get solar fencing since our village is located close to the town. Therefore, we didn’t approach the authorities for solar fencing,” Langten added.
The gewog’s agriculture extension office says providing fencing to the village would be challenging as the houses are all scattered.
Nangkor village has more than a hundred households.
