My Experience with KVK : Nandurbar
Day 1:
I started from Hyderabad on 19th Dec as soon as I got confirmation from Dr. Dange who was once the principal of KVK. I reached there the next day by evening and just introduced myself to the staff and some project students there.
Next day, first session was taken by Bhawsar sir, who is a farm manager. He explained about the average rainfall in Nandurbar district and one of the farming techniques called multi level trail that was experimented on mirchi crop to know the efficiency of some seven different kinds of seeds available in the market.
KVK has three different kinds of farms A B and C that demonstrate the kind of farming practice and type of crops to be grown in different water-availability conditions. Farm A has water throughout the year, Farm B is a semi arid region, and Farm C is an arid region.
The next session in the afternoon was taken by U.D Patil sir who is an expert in soil testing and recommending appropriate fertilizers adhering to soil investigation report.
He explained us the physical chemical and biological characteristics of soil, the major, minor and micro nutrients that are needed for the plant growth and some technical data regarding well fertile soil and the soil sampling techniques that needed to be followed by the farmer before bringing the soil for soil testing.
The last session of the day in the evening was taken by Uttarvar sir who explained about various improved mechanical tools that reduce he stress on the bullocks while farming and some very simple tools developed by other institutions and KVK themselves which makes the harvesting job simpler and even some power driven tools for spraying pesticides all across 1 acre farm just by changing location 10 times. These are of great use to farmers in managing their time and reducing their effort in various stages of farming.
Day 2:
This day, we had a field trip across Nandurbar district covering almost 150km along with the students of KVK.
We first visited Krushi Utpann Bazaar Samithi which buys all the stock from the farmers at a rate decided according to market demand and imposing a fixed brokerage fee per quintal. This stock is then sold to retailers after imposing some processing fee.
The next visit was to an Agri Equipment Centre, run by Ramesh Chowdary who rents the Farming tools to the farmers who cannot afford owing them. Farmers can book the equipment on the day before they wish to take them and pay on hourly or daily basis. He even started spare parts and servicing centre recently.
We then went to a village named vakapata in Gujarat where we met an interesting farmer named Mahesh patil. He is a B.Sc Agri Graduate and took some technical guidance before he actually went into making agriculture as a business. He now owns 42 acres of land and has various crops like Mirchi, Cotton, Jowar, Maize, Wheat in main. He made a profit of about 38 lakh on mirchi last year with which he constructed a nursery with automated micro sprinkler technology with 50 lakh and he got a subsidy of 25 lakh within a month he applied to Gujarat government. His annual profit over is about40-50 lakh now and he lives in a triplex in a village, What a Great entrepreneur he is!
The next Entrepreneur we met was Sanjay Bhausar who manages Kalyani diary. He has enough buffaloes to make a turn-over of 50k per day and leaving behind the expenses, he gets a minimum of 20k per day as profit.
Oh God…! Why the heck I choose Engineering? Working under someone to earn an amount that these people earn in hours? And that too in a Desi Style? Wow man…!
Day 3:
This was a very exciting day as we are going to visit surrounding villages and see the projects there and that too on bike.
We visited projects across Borcheck east and west, Karngali Village, Nizampur and Nagare.
We visited a check dam that was previously built on temporary basis in support with KVK which used to cultivate around 700 acres. Now with the active involvement of villagers and with the efforts of district collector, the check dam was made permanent which is now used across 3000 acres of land for cultivation.
The next project we visited is Tree-based irrigation where a group of 100 farmers were given some 12 guava, 24 mango and 28 amla trees in an acre. The objective of this type of farming is that if they involve in protecting these saplings for about 5 years then they automatically grow giving a notable yield without any further parenting.
We then saw a seed processing machine that separates rice from husk. Previously farmers used to sell unprocessed-rice for 1600/- per quintal. Because of the machine supplied by KVK, the farmers can make the use of this machine for free and even sell the processed rice for 3500/- per quintal which is a huge variation. But the variation is less with other crops like jowar, wheat and maize.
The next project is promotion of well irrigation. They found a well of a farmer that is giving less yield, they managed to make it deeper from 28 feet to 38 feet so that an appreciable yield is noticed and convinced the farmer to make the nearby farmers use that well for irrigation.
We then took off for lunch in that village head Subash Jatre Asare’s home beautifully made with bamboo and mud, a typical green home. We had discussions about the influence of KVK in the farming, the yield and the farmer’s annual profit, rates of crops and the profit made by the retailers.
Day 4:
This day we visited Farm B and Farm C which are semi arid and arid kind of cultivation regions, the kind of crops grown there, kind of water harvesting system adopted, farm pond construction and implementation of new techniques in farming in those areas.
Day 5:
This is the most exciting day of the vacation and the last day too. We started to dhadgau early in the morning 6 and reached there by 10.00 on a long bike ride through the most amazing satpura mountain range and travelling across ghat roads on Splendor was the greatest part of the trip.
This is one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited. As the time is very less, we happened to see very few projects which included Agricultural equipment rental system which is managed by a farmer who collects the rent of 10/- and handovers it to KVK. They organize weekly meetings on the project status and exchange ideas upon village development projects. KVK supplied seeds of hybrid quality to some selected farmers here and they found the increased yield in less time. They encourage poultry by promoting goat rearing. KVK supplied few lambs across the villages. They even sponsored some processing machines that can be used by the villagers. They promote Self-Help-Groups by giving ideas to the women in the villages to generate some income sources to support their family. We happened to visit a family where the house hold markets the dal that is bought from the farmers as raw product and she processes it in a machine, packs them in bags and supplies to the nearest kirana stores. She makes a profit of about 2000/- per quintal. She even makes some sharbats, golas, which are of great demand in the summer.
I hope more such KVKs get established in villages and offer technical guidance to the farming community to make them believe even agriculture can make huge profits and the stories of young entrepreneurs Mahesh and Sanjay always inspire the not just the people in villages who look farming just as a traditional practice, even the young people in cities who think it’s just in IT who can makes profits.
About KVK :
Krushi Vignan Kendra a brain child of Hedgawar seva samithi (HSS) Aurangabad, which comes under the agricultural development wing of HSS. KVK offers technical guidance to the farmers in the farming practices, use of improved mechanical and power driven tools for agriculture, different crop patterns, importance of soil testing and the necessary treatment for the soil based on soil investigation report and they even offer off-level and field-level training on a regular basis and also provides distance education in B.Sc Agriculture, horticulture and other diploma programs with experienced staff, specialized in fields of Horticulture, agricultural Engineering, Plant protection, Agronomy, Soil testing etc…, recruited by Department of agriculture, India
