Ordinary farmers utilize these approaches to eliminate the rats due to lack of knowledge about natural methods, which describe utilizing other organisms to manage rodents.
The federal government, too, promotes getting rid of rats successfully – by utilizing various kinds of traps, toxins and gas tablets. Moreover, it invests crores of taka to observe rat culling week every year, when leading hunters are rewarded.
In 2020, the federal government prepared a list of over 600 rat hunters from throughout the nation to save the crops, generally paddy plants.
But a few of these chemical and mechanical tools negatively affect the environmental balance.
Take the case of the abrupt usage of chemical fertilizers and pesticides as an example: these are eliminating and repeling bugs, which are vital for pollination and crop development.
How damaging are they?
According to authorities of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), rodents of black, hairy and small-tail ranges are typically seen in the paddy fields and rice storage facilities around the year. They spread quickly throughout the Aman season.
The authorities recognize the rodents as a threat and take rigid procedures to remove them prior to the breeding season starts.
They state rats demolish around 10% of the overall rice and wheat production, while extended floods, dry spell, cold, bugs and plague impact the nation’s food security. Another federal government price quote recommends that rats damage 700,000 lots of food grains each year.
“Farmers, millers and traders consider rats a significant pest in all the rice-producing countries in Asia…rats attack the plants and cut the sheaves when the paddy is almost ripened,” says a post in the “Krishi Seba” publication released by the Ministry of Agriculture. If paddy is saved in a storage facility for 3 months, rats might harm 5-10% of the crops.
Written by 3 leading clinical officers of the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI), the short article concentrates on the lifecycle of rats and how to remove them by utilizing various methods.
Thoughts on natural methods
The BRRI short article likewise clarifies the natural approach to avoid the spread of rats in crop fields, however just a few sentences are at the bottom.
It says: “Proper management of defense and breeding of rat eaters will minimize the issue to an excellent degree, together with preserving the food cycle of the environment.
“Rats are the main food of snakes, monitors, jungle cats, owls and foxes. Steps should be taken for conserving their natural environment, breeding, and rearing at the farmer level.”
These animals are a true blessing for farming however are vanishing from numerous locations due to quick urbanization, environment loss, and contamination, state farmers who grow safe food by utilizing natural fertilizers and natural insect control procedures.
Due to superstitious notions, worry and absence of understanding about the advantages, farmers along with typical individuals eliminate these predators, generally snakes and screens.
Daarash: Natural insect control
Such a friend is a rat snake or daarash: a non-venomous fast-crawling types (taxonomic name Ptyas mucosa). Rat snakes can be light grey to olive green, yellow, and even jet black.
They are typically seen in forests, wetlands, paddy fields, farmland and muddy locations, and victimize little reptiles like frogs and rats.
People error the rat snakes as being toxic because they are huge, like the cobra, and they wander around human environments, consisting of the cooking area and cow shed. There are superstitious notions that rat snakes have spinal columns on the waist or tail.
Many town individuals still think that rat snakes attack cows and draw their milk since they do not understand that snakes with split tongues cannot draw at all which it is a bug that bites the cows.
Maruf Ahmed is a youth took part in growing safe food and mentor kids in a char location in Kurigram. He promotes the preservation of rat snakes amongst regional farmers and likewise on social networks.
“A rat snake that resides in cropland eliminates all the rats within a three-acre location. According to quotes by skilled farmers, an adult rat snake eliminates 70-80 rats a year.
“If those rats were alive and bred, their families would have multiplied to 20,000-30,000 after one year,” he said, advising the federal government to run awareness projects and explain the requirement for safeguarding rat snake environments.
