Farmers come up with innovative means to save their crops from animals and birds. Some hang big black earthen pots with the look of human faces on poles while others put scarecrows in farmlands.
However, some farmers in the Gondia area of Dhenkanal have adopted a different way to scare away wild animals like boars and save their crops. They say, their innovation has yielded good results.
As per reports, a farmer has suspended four glass bottles by tying them with a string on a piece of stick in his farmland, where he cultivated groundnuts, on the banks of the Brahmani River. Some iron nuts tied in a string were left hanging among the bottles. The bottom end of the string was tied with a piece of cardboard from a carton box. The cardboard keeps on twirling at the slightest wind, causing the iron nuts to clang with bottles. This creates a jingling sound that scares away the wild animals from coming to the farmland.
This system of scaring away the animals has been adopted by most farmers in the area, as the system has been effective against the wild animals.
Because of this innovation, they needn’t stay awake all through the night to keep a watch on acres of farmlands.
Farmer Biranchi Malick said, "A forest is there in our Karamul panchayat. Elephants, porcupines, boars, and jackals damage our crops. We farmers have adopted this mechanism to scare the animals away. Boars are a major menace. We fear to kill boars because of legal action. This system keeps these marauding animals away from our farmland.”
Another farmer Sudam Sahu said that this system has been effective against wild animals.