Towards organic farming

 Author’s Name: Nidhi Kaushik
Organisation’s Name: CECOEDECON (Centre for Community Economics & Development Consultant Society)
Contact: Sharad Joshi
Website:  www.cecoedecon.org

Future with organic farming

This case reflects initiative of a farmer for starting the organic farming after getting organic farming training and exposure. Chhoriya is an interior village of the Newai block of Tonk district, which is 16 km away from tehsil head quarter. It is a multi-caste (Gurjar, Meena, Brahmin, etc.) village, where most of the family’s livelihoods depend upon the farming and agriculture labors.
Mr. Prabhulal Meena lives in this village with his 4 family members; he is a small category farmer (only 2 hectare of land). He has 4 buffaloes, 2 cattle, and 3 goats. He is growing Groundnut Cluster beans, Pearl millet (bajra), green gram, Black gram, and Wheat, Barley, Mustard, Gram, Lucerne, etc during the Kharif and Rabi season, respectively. Since the last few year he is being faced some problems such as in his fields like as high cost of cultivation (due to use of chemical fertilizers and other inputs), increased soil salinity, low soil productivity, etc. Day by day his problems were going in upward direction. Once he participate in the capacity building Programme i.e. Training on Transfer of packages of Practices(TPP) of NRM, through which he learned about organic farming, method of composting, indigenous bio-pesticides, IPM (Integrated Pest Management), etc.  This training changed his mindset. He met to NRM expert and shown his highly interest for starting the organic farming. With support of organisation, an IPM of Mustard (Bio-902) was conducted on his field (1bigha), in which seed treatment (Trichoderma), proper spacing, time of sowing, proper seed rate, application of organic manure (150kg/bigha), etc. Farmers followed IPM practices. During the crop growth period, he observed better growth rate and lesser insect infestation & disease infection as compared to control plot, that was also encouraged to him for adoption of organic farming. Now, farmer has been known about the benefits of organic farming, so that he decided to switch off the chemical farming. He took an initiative and started the work of Vermicompost unit in November, 2006, in which 50% financial as well as regular technical support is given through the Cecoedecon.  Along with this, field day was organised on his farm in February 2007,in which 50 farmers including women participated from near by villages of Newai block. IPM practices were practically shown on the farmer’s field. Farmers inspected and observed impacts of the IPM measures. They observed the following things;

• It is cheaper than the chemical fertilizers
• Save the soil from the harmful effect of chemicals (pesticides, fertilizer, etc)
• Less insect and disease attackBetter vegetative growth as well as higher yield attributes
• More eco-friendly
• Improve economy of the farmer

During the field visit, most of the farmers were told that Mr Prabhu Ji would be obtained 10-20% higher yield as compared to the control (chemical fertilizers) plot. That was true farmer has been obtained 25% higher yield over the control plot. After seeing the good results of Vermicompost plant, other farmers are also interest to adopt the organic farming at their own level. Farmer is also conserving the seed (organic seed) to cope up with the seed shortage and its availability for him as well as other farmers in future.
Major achievement

• Strengthen of farmer-to-farmer learning process.
• Demonstration of IPM of agricultural crops that has resulted in the increase of production by 25%
• Strengthen the Concept of seed conservation.
• Aware farmers about the Organic Farming

Picture 1: Result Demo in Groundnut crop, Farmers of Newai block, of Tonk district, comparing the results of organic and chemical farming.

Picture 2: Integrated Pest Management techniques,  “Pheromone trap”  in the field for control of “Heliothus” insect’s population.