caterpillars of leaf rollers and rice stem borers they used to raise the water level in the pest affected fields up to the tips of the paddy plants. Then in order to escape from the slowly rising water level worms would move upwards and finally float. At this stage labourers would collect the floating worms using baskets and take them to the ring bunds where they are destroyed. This method of catching and destroying worms
from paddy fields is known as throwing baskets for worms or
puzhuvinu kozhyerial. Some of the paddy farmers in the study area used to adopt
an occult practice called chazhi vilakku to control rice bugs. In this practice holy water blessed by priests is sprinkled in the affected fields. Usually a small portion of the affected field in some corner was left for rice bugs and according to the farmers all of the rice bugs in the field would accumulate in that corner sparing the other portions of the field. Many elder farmers in the study area stated that they could control rates also using a similar method called
elivilakku. Since the seventies local markets were flooded with a wide variety of insecticides and paddy farmers began to use them indiscreetly. Until a few years back most the farmers used to apply insecticides in their fields three to four times during a single crop season at regular intervals. The Indo-Dutch Mission had estimated the total quantity of liquid pesticides used in paddy cultivation in Kuttanad region during the year 1987-88 as 293660 litres. Along with this 190.97 tonnes of powdered pesticides were also used in that year. Besides
the permitted pesticides, the already banned DDT and its two derivatives DDE and DDD were frequently used in the study area even after the flowering of paddy plants. Very often farmers were not aware of the consequences of the excess use of the highly toxic pesticides and in matters regarding the quantity and variety of its use they were guided by pesticide dealers and salesmen. Recently the quantity and periodicity in pesticide application in the study area had been considerably reduced. At present nearly one- fourth of the paddy farmers do not apply any sort of pesticide or insecticide in their paddy fields. The average quantity of pesticides used in the study area during the previous summer crop is estimated as 328 milliliters per acre. Important varieties of pesticides used in the
41
Indo- Dutch Mission (1989): Op.cit.,Annex C, Appendix 1, p
study area are metacid, dimacrone, monocrotophos, nuvacron, bavastin, ecalux and
furadan. In addition to it some farmers apply protect their crop from plant diseases. ix)
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