Farmers in Rensing Bat Village, West Sakra District, East Lombok Regency, are still planting rice even though the rain is no longer falling. "We are planting rice even though it hasn't rained since a month ago. It's time for all the farmers in Rensing Bat village to plant their rice seeds after approximately a month ago sowing when it was raining," said one of the P3A administrators, Badarudin Sa'at.
He said, the existence of the Pandan Duri Dam in Terara sub-district means that farmers in this village do not lack water to plant rice in the summer even though the distribution uses a schedule system with other P3As in the southern region of East Lombok, he said again. Meanwhile, another farmer, Mahjub, who is also a charity from Lepok Hamlet, added, "As long as farmers want to plant, we from the P3A management will recommend channeling water to their rice fields, this is our duty that we must carry out and ensure that farmers in our area continue to get water to irrigate their fields.
Now it's no longer the dry season because it's time to plant rice. Planting rice is synonymous with rain, but since a month ago it never rained, only clouds then turned into very hot heat, in other places, especially the northern part, it always rains, but where we are "It has rarely rained this year since planting tobacco a few months ago," said Mahjub. The anxiety of the farming community is increasingly visible, the rice that has been planted cannot only rely on water from the pandan thorn dam, at any time the pandan thorn dam can decrease and have to wait a long time for the water to return to normal, rice also really needs rain from the sky to be able to grow normal to be able to turn the grain into quality rice.
There are still many people who have not been able to plant, especially in the southern part in Rensing Bat hamlet and Timuk Rurung hamlet, this is because water still cannot reach these places due to the limited distribution time from the Pandan Duri Dam management. God willing, in the next two weeks everything will be irrigated according to the existing schedule.
