In a bid to check indiscrimi
nate bush burning, especially in the Rural Communities of the Country, an Agricultural Engineer, Mr . Umor Muzan has called on farmers to monitor such occurrences.
Muzan who stated this recently with The Tide in a telephone interview said although not every case of bush burning is deliberate, the issue of mischief should not be ruled out.
According to him, some insensitive hunters could set fires to bushes to enable them trap animals without minding the negative consequence son farming activities.
He said the adverse effect to the rural farmer are numerous as the development was capable of altering the ecosystem or the habitat.
In the case of land left to go fallow, he said due to the unexpected burning of the bush, the land would suffer.
“Indiscriminate and unexpected large scale bush burning alters the natural recycling system of the land to suffer, thereby making the land to be destroyed by heat.
He explained that the negative  effect on the rural farmer ranges from loss of already cultivated crops, difficulty in cultivating new farms and the incidence of fishing weeds.
According to him , when fire ravages large expanse of lands, as soon as the rains set in, weed would overwhelm the farmer.
Explaining further, he said when the land suffers such fires, natural recycling animals like earthworm, millipede amongst others that work to enrich the soil are destroyed.
He said since these organisms and organic matter are lost to the fires, crops may grow well but output of produce would reduce.
“Of course vegetative growth of crops would be high but on the long run, output could be low because of the absence of organic materials to nourish the soil”, he said.
It could be recalled that The Tide reported various cases of indiscriminate bush burning that affected parts of the state during the more than five months prolonged harmatten and dry season which saw the loss of farms especially at the rural areas of the state.