CHEMICAL FERTILIZER MERCHANT CAMPAIGNING FOR ORGANIC FARMING

Prakash in his shop.

           Prakash Sarkar lives in Nabatkati village under Swarupnagar Block. This area is adjacent to the Indo-Bangladesh border. In the year 1994, Mr. Sarkar started his business and at that time he was only fertilizer merchant in that locality. He termed himself as a Krishi Bandhu (a friend of the farmers). Beside the business he has a small land of 1 acre in which he mostly produced vegetables.
           He observed that the cost for the fertilizers and the pesticides were increasing day by day but the productions from the field were being remarkable reducing. In 2007, he joined in a Krishi Sammelon ( a seminar on farmers and farming policies) held at Swarupnagar. There he met many agriculture scientists and botanists and came to know about the evil effects of chemical farming. There was a brain storming discussion on farming policies and he knew that many developed countries were then restricting the indiscriminate use of pesticides in farm land. He also came to know about ecological farming and organic farming. One of the botanists told them about the utility of vermicompost and bio pest controllers.

          In 2008, Swanirvar started a mass campaign programme on Sustainable farming in Swarupnagar Block. At that time Prakash met one of our successful farmers, Mr. Ananda Mondal who lived very near to his house. Anada told him that he was not using any kind of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in his field and using only homemade vermicompost, compost tea, vermi- wash and bio pest controllers in his field. He also added that he had learnt these techniques from Swanirvar’s agri schools in Swarupnagar.

           Prakash immediately met our staff and took training on vermicompost. After that he made two chambers (vermin pits) adjacent to his shop and now producing vermicompost from there. He is not only using this compost in his field but also selling the rest amount. Now he is one of our campaigners in that locality. One of his remarkable achievements is that he had persuaded all the vegetable merchants of Nabatkati market to put their unsold rotten vegetable wastes in his vermi-pits. In our state, most of the markets have no system of waste management and the rotten vegetable wastes are scattered hare and there. But Mr. Sarkar’s initiative has shown a new way and has been praised by the Nabatkati merchant association.

Producing vermicompost