SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE
Work in 105 villages of 28 GPs in 7 blocks with ~ 10,000 farmers
Continuing Work : ( i) Integrated Pest management in rice (ii) Poyra ( relay ) cropping (iii) Intensive home garden (iv) Organic and Bio soil nutrients (v) Land shaping (vi) Trials with new varieties and indigenous rice (vii) Mulch Potato (viii) Consumer Awareness on safe food: (ix) Promoting herbals (x) Non-chemical pest & disease control (xi) SRI method of rice cultivation (xii) Growing vegetables in sacks and buckets where appropriate (xiii) Expanding farmer’s seed network (xiv) Village grain banks Farmer’s Conference : After several years gap we held 2 farmer’s conferences in 2 blocks with 400 farmers from 22 villages attending . The highlight was the experience narrated by some of our totally committed organic farmers to whom we had provided some initial inputs 4-5 years back. From reports that we got , many farmers were enthused enough to start trying some of the ideas they had heard .
Orientation for the Leaders of Farmer’s Groups : We now have many farmers groups . But quite a few of them are unstable and go through various ups and down. For the first time this year we held 7 orientation meetings for 100 leaders of these groups on some of the nuts and bolts of running a group. New groups are also being formed
Area Resource & Training Centres (ARTC) : In the last 5 years we had failed to establish this concept floated by DRCSC of creating farmer managed and owned centres. This year we were able to form 3 and they have just started functioning. We will know the result only after another 2 years.
Sale of vermicompost by farmers: Out of the farmers who had been making vermi-compost for own use after getting trained by us , some of the leading one this year started selling it to others and have earned a decent amount of money .
Amrita-pani becoming popular : A simple liquid concoction made from cow urine which we learnt from Maharashtra has become extremely popular as it is very easy to make and has proved to be quite effective in many cases.
Totally organic : In our triple cropping , highly chemical intensive, very low land holding district, we had not been able to get a substantial group of farmers to agree to make their lands totally organic. But finally we seem to be getting some success where 60 farmers have agreed to make their 80 bighas (~27 acres ) of land totally organic. We will have to nurture them for several years.
Fish in Tubewell water : 12 women started the trial this year of digging a 4’X6’ pit where the water of their home tubewell accumulates and are farming local catfish there. The sides of the pit are lined with various herbs like Helencha, Thankuni, Kulekhara , Brahmi etc
Annual reports for the previous years can be seen in http://www.swanirvarbengal.org
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