• Investment World
• eWorld
• Catalyst
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest

M.R. Subramani

Recently in Indore

NOWADAYS Dilip Singh Chawla of Rajpura village in Madhya Pradesh's Dhar district saves the leftover curd in his house in an earthen pot.

The curd is allowed to accumulate for 15 days before he mixes it with neem leaves or oil, cow dung, cow urine, a little onion and chilli juice in water and sprays it on his tomato crop. This he repeats every 15 days. The quantity of curd, cow dung, cow urine and water is in the ratio of 3:3:3:100.

So do Neetu Sau of Nagaravi village in Khargone district on his Bt cotton crop and Poonam Thakur of Umeriya village in Indore district on his carrot crop. These are just a few of the hundreds of farmers in Madhya Pradesh who are spraying this cocktail of organic pesticide on their crops.

"Madhya Pradesh started this a couple of years ago. Now, it has begun to yield results," says Dr G.S. Kaushal, Director, Agriculture..

Farmers begin spraying this once the shoots of a crop pop up. "Farmers have adopted this method in over one lakh hectares spread over3,100 villages in the State," he says.

Chawla's story is interesting. His tomato plant, for example, was submerged in water during monsoon for over 24 hours. He did lose the initial fruiting after the floods but since then, he has been harvesting healthy tomatoes at least once a week.

"At least, three tonnes of tomatoes have been harvested so far on the plot of 0.2 hectare. He has got an average of Rs 8 a kg for the tomatoes," Dr Kaushal says.

"In Malgaon village in Khandwa district, farmers growing organic cotton have saved Rs 23 lakh on fertilisers and pesticides," he says.

According to him, a cotton crop on a hectare needs 10 pesticide sprays costing at least Rs 8,000. Bt cotton could need about four sprays costing Rs 3,200. "By using this cocktail of pesticide, the farmers' expenditure is just Rs 1,000 towards labour cost for spraying," he says.

How did the State come upon this cocktail? "Necessity is the mother of invention," Dr Kaushal says. Three years of drought resulted in farmers reducing crop inputs and this forced the State Agriculture Department to look to other ways to help them save their crop from pesticide and insects. "It was by trial and error methods we came across this," Dr Kaushal says, adding "whatever is saved can be used for development."

In fact, Madhya Pradesh has reported good harvest of kharif crop despite lower use of fertiliser and pesticides this year.

Organic farming has resulted in a price tag being attached to things such as cow dung, which now costs Rs 1,000 for a tractor load (3 tonnes).

This has not resulted in any drastic reduction of production. "For the first two years, there was a slight reduction. But this year, the production has been as good as the one like using inorganic pesticide/fertilisers," says Chawla.

Farmers growing Bt cotton in Khargone district have also reported good production. "Seeing the result on my field, other farmers have decided to take up organic cotton farming next year," says Neetu Sau.

"Now, I am asking the farmers to save the curd in old copper vessels as that can led to formation of copper sulphate," says Dr Kaushal.

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication

Stories in this Section
Farmers' own `curdy' pesticide

Copyright © 2003, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line