Rice can be cultivated without chemical pesticides in KerlaHome

A small group of farmers in Kuruvai village, near Vadakkencherry, in Kerala’s Palakkad district has demonstrated that rice can be cultivated without chemical pesticides and see the yield and profit rise substantially.

“Seeing is believing”, says K. V. Usha, Director, Agricultural Technology Management Agency (ATMA), Department of Agriculture, about the Kuruvai experiment, which involved nearly a hundred families with holdings ranging between 0.4 and 1.5 acres.

They cultivated paddy as their survival crop for long, using traditional knowledge. But cultivation often failed. Some were forced to switch to cash crops and the others to tapioca and banana, which saw acreage under paddy shrink from 33 hectares to 18 hectares in a decade.

A spell of hope came as paddy procurement price was raised to Rs. 19 a kg by Kerala government. But labour cost rose. Pest attacks forced farmers to use heavy doses of chemical pesticides, which led to pest resurgence, a condition in which more and more pesticides are used with decreasing effect.

But during the second crop season (Mundakan), starting October 2015, the farmers, under the guidance of ATMA, adopted pest surveillance and agro-ecology-based plant health management, a concept being promoted now by the National Institute of Plant Health Management, Hyderabad.

The average yield rose to 5,500 kgs per hectare, an increase of 30 per cent over the previous level of 4,250 kgs. The farmers spent Rs. 47,785 per hectare from which the yields were 5,500 kgs of paddy and 3,000 kgs of straw. They earned a profit of Rs. 74,715 per hectare. Besides, Department of Agriculture pays a subsidy of Rs. 11,500 per ha.

Added to the profits is the fact that the new pest management method helped avoid four to five rounds of pesticide sprays, which cost them between Rs 4,000 to 5,000 per hectare.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/