21 April
Local farmers are unhappy, even though the growing of groundnut has been promising. Groundnuts were cultivated on 30.50 acres of land owned by nine local farmers during the groundnut planting season.
Farmers cultivated a new groundnut species in November 2018, in cooperation with the Myanmar Oil Mill Entrepreneurs Association. And local farmers harvested groundnuts in April 2019, gathering over 900 baskets of groundnut.
“We have grown HsinPadaythar 11 groundnut species, which is rare. And we want to continue to grow this groundnut species, keeping with the association. Cultivation of this groundnut species is a bit expensive. We have expected the cultivation to cost only K 150,000 per acre. In reality, the cultivation cost us K 250,000 per acre. For me, I have grown groundnuts on 5 acres of land and the cultivation cost me K 1.4 million, without the harvesting costs. But I could have produced only 150 baskets of groundnut. So, I suffered losses,” said a groundnut grower.
“We won’t give up. We will also plant this species of groundnut in the next raining season. This year we lost almost K 300,000 when growing winter groundnut,” said DawOhnMyintKhine, a local groundnut farmer.—KyawHtay (Nyaung Oo) (Translated by Hay Mar)
