Hello Hive

This is the situation of our rice farm. As at yesterday the transplanted seedlings are now almost completely dried up. These won't recover when the rains finally resumed. We are been faced with the challenges of not been able to grow rice in this hears farming season.

Each farming season often comes with its unique challenges and it often difficult to predict what the problems for each year will be ahead of time. This is the time of the year in which we are now been faced with a drought in between the farming session. The best time for Transplanting this seedling is the month of July and we have started this task since from then.

   The seedlings planted before now are already well established in the soil.

Some of the seedlings are now established in the soil and won't be affected by how long the rains stays away but the seedlings we have transplanting right from the begining of this month is almost completely withderd now. Rice plants needs sufficient rainfalls after they have been transplanted most especially. The well watered swamp helps the seedlings to adapt to the new field environment and this is done within just two weeks.

Since the month of August we when these were transplanted we have just had some light shower that made no difference.

The major challenge that i fear mostly now is that once these rice grains withers away, we won't be able to get another seedling to replace the empty fields when the rains returns. And all the money used to purchase chemicals, clear and prepare the farm will be wasted. All the labour put into this field will be wasted.

At this time we have exhausted our seedlings and it is past the time for direct planting in the soil. Having the fields partly dried like this, it will be good if we can plant the grains directly into the soil and that one will likely survive but the month of August is far gone and we are not assured of rains in the month of November when the grains planted at this time will likely be be producing seeds.

It is a very difficult situation right now and we can only hope that the rains resumes early to save the situation.