Modern Agriculture

Resource person: Shreekanth and Desai, Shettappa and Sangeetha Patil

First session started by explaining about fact data about agricultural production and different types of farming in India. And also showed an movie for an half an hour, regarding how 2,20,000 people died during pesticides spraying and the effect of pesticides on Farmers in Punukula(dt), Andhra Pradesh.  we did an discussion regarding the effects of farmers.

Another movie  related to effect of endosulphate sparing in cashew nut crop, spraying  leads to Mental plasy in children’s who are staying near to cashew nut yard  in Kasargoda(dt) in Kerala, and also  showed an alternative way to control pesticides in that movie.

Next  session regarding  Reaching the unreached farm families

They mainly focused on Dry farming farmers, and ecological agriculture. This year government has allocated budgets of only 5% and not showing interest for the development of dry farmers, concentrated on irrigation farmers. And  government fails to  focused on farmers sectors in creating wealth and providing livelihood.

Non-elite farmers require land holding, we have to change the attitude of the farmers and also make farmers to know about indigenous technology usage.

Ecological and Sustainability farming adoptability is the biggest issue to change the mindset of farmers.

In Evolution of Agriculture Covered the topic regarding

ü Agriculture before green Farming:- Family farming, organic & traditional farming  and produced mainly for family consumption.

ü Conventional Agriculture-make use of Green revolution, usage of high yield variety and mono cropping  based.

ü Surplus Farming-produced for market and yield get stagnated

ü Market Farming

ü Commercial Farming

 

Explained about climate change and Methane, Nitrous oxide, co₂  impact on climate change in India.

 

Further Session started by showing the movie on Groundnut farming about how  treatment of seeds with bio-fertilizer  will do, so that seed can protect in dormant state & from other harmful microbes and explained about  present farming methods and how AME will work with farmers.

 

Next presentation on LEISA(Low External Input for Sustainable agriculture)

LEISA main aim is to proper utilization of natural resources and conservation & better management for future us. Its like Step towards Organic farming  with blend of Modern Technology  & Indigenous technology .

 

LEISA ----------------Indigenous farming + Modern technology

 

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Income  generation activity

 

Along with these, farmers has to own some Income generation activity  so that they can easily sustainable

 

Next  we visited to AME office in Innam Veerapur and fields in Kurdikere village. In office they displayed different types of  manure like vermicompost, organic manure, soil fertility testing, seed enrichment , mixed farming, bunds formation and Azolla Importance .

 

In Kurdikere village, we visited to fields. Explained about importance of Agriculture Ecosystem system analysis. Explained about conducting  Farmers field School to villagers from AME to farmers. Farmer themselves will do faming. its like practical for them they have to experiment themselves in any lead farmer field, so that they can analyze the yield effectively  like learning through experiment.

Last day, we did a debate on “ Path to Progress from Rural economy  v/s Industrial economy.  More than an hour it went of.

 

About Integrated crop farming system gave briefly explanation about Integrated Crop, Nutrient, pest management and any other income generation activity. In olden days Livestock is one of the source for Farm operation and fuel for family.  Famers has to start  livestock activity so that dependence on external input and cost effectives can be reduce .

At last Mr.Srikanth ended his session by asking who are interested to work for rural development, is there need to work in rural. Majority showed interest to work in villages.

 

Conclusion

we can do dry farming by using rain water and by following water conservation method farmers can produced average crop before this agriculture session i was demystified by this concept I used to think that without water we can’t do farming.

By using Natural resource management(NRM) and other integrated method, we can do effective farming. Even in dry farming we can yield good crop. Field visit helped me to understand more by practically exposure by interacting with farmers and LEISA method and integrated farming is new concept to me and eye opening to know all.