Campaign for Relay cropping

The State of West Bengal in the eastern part of India, bordering Bangladesh, is a unique example where rice is cultivated in all the three seasons viz., summer, autumn and winter. The State has to feed almost 70 million people with the support of only 5.8 million hectares of cultivable land. Since independence the state has, therefore, had to resort to more areas under rice than for other crops, especially pulses, the productivity of which are comparatively low. At present the area under rice occupies about 66 percent of the total gross cropped area, which is about 9.24 million hectares with an average cropping intensity of 171 percent. The total area under pulses has diminished gradually every year from 582,000 ha during 1957-58 to 242,000 ha during 2002-03. It is a general practice of the farmers of this region to sow various winter pulse crops like lentil (Lens culinaris L.), mustard (BRASICCA COMPESTRISS), lathyrus (Lathyrus sativus L.), chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) and pea (Pisum sativum), wheat (Triticum aestivum ) etc, in the standing rice crop field, just before the harvest to ensure germination using the residual moisture and to avoid tillage operations during pulse growing. Such a relay cropping operation (known by the terms utera or paira) is very popular for growing lathyrus.

Advantages:

1. Getting one time more production, suitable for mono cropped zones( like Sundarban regions ).

2. No plowing required. Save a lot of money.

3. Less amount of water is needed, environment friendly farming technique.
4. Increase soil fertility through nitrosamines bacteria.

Disadvantages:
1. Required 20% more seeds than usual.
2. As the plants grow zigzag, sometimes need more labour.
3. In some areas of sundarban it failed as there was no scope for irrigation and there was no rain from Sept-march.

Swanirvar’s achievements:
From 2006, we are campaigning for relay cropping in the five blocks of North 24 Parganas. Our year wise achievements are as follows,
Year        Bigha        No. of Farmers

2006       4000             3500

2007       4500             3700

2008       4900             4200

2009       5800             4800