“I feel very happy when I saw many varieties
of a particular crop in my field. I feel happier if any intervention brings a fruitful result for our farmers.”
-Sadhu Ayal
Sadhu Oyal belongs to Gellaguda village of Semiliguda
Block of Koraput District. He is 43 years old. Gellaguda village is situated
around 45km away from Koraput District Headquarter. The village is
characterized by mainly poor tribal communities in the interior village of Koraput.
The village economy is based on agriculture as there are lots of opportunities
for the marketing of agriculture produce. Sadhu
has studied up to the second standard. His wife, Daimati Ayal is a member of Maa
Tulasi Kalanjiam group promoted by DHAN Foundation. She has
never gone to school and always helps Sadhu in agriculture work. They have three
female children. The eldest one is studying in standard three while others are still
yet to go to schooling. He has 5
acres of land where he grows paddy (around 3 acres), small millets and ginger
(around 1.5 acres), and vegetables (around 0.5 acres). He usually cultivates
Mandia, suan (Little millet), Alasi (niger), Kheda Jana (Sorghum), Biri (black
gram), Kolatha (horse gram), Adam (groundnuts), Ada (ginger) etc. In addition to
this, he also works as a mason and hardware salesman in the Kunduli weekly
market. He has an interest in cultivating different crops with an improved package of
practices. He has more interest in cultivating different varieties of Mandia (ragi) in his field. He always
tries to be involved in many agricultural research activities related to Mandia
production.
He came to know about RESMISA project
intervention of DHAN Foundation from his wife. She was given 2kg of a new
variety and told to do transplantation. While people were struggling for
transplantation of paddy, he dared to transplant Mandia. While he raised
nursery, all farmers made jokes by looking nursery. Even it was tedious, he
transplanted only 0.30 acres of land. He had also broadcasted local variety
i.e. Dasarabodi.
DHAN Foundation staffs regularly monitored the different improved package of practices of millet cultivation. He used to conserve seeds of
different crops in my field. Three years
ago, he had only three varieties of Mandia
and two varieties of little millet.
Now, he has conserved 37 varieties of Mandia through Bio-diversity
Block ( i.e. A set of available varieties are grown in a small plot in a block
on a farmer’s field for observation and conservation purpose) which were identified by DHAN Foundation. He does
experiment with new technology in the field initially and then others follow. He is the first person who did transplantation of
Mandia with support from DHAN
Foundation three years ago. He transplanted Bhairabi variety which grew very
well and also had more production as compared with other farmers. In this way,
he did not do weeding which is very tedious and also more expensive. He had
around 2.3 quintals of Mandia from
0.30 acre of land. In his village, there were also many farmers hardly could
get the same from one acre of land. All farmers from neighbor villages visited
his transplanted field. All were happy by looking crops in his transplanted field.
Many farmers in his village started doing transplantation of Mandia in their field. In the field, he
did rouging for seed procurement of Bhairabi variety. Many farmers from
different distant villages took Bhairabi seeds from him.
He has done bio-diversity block in order
to conserve seeds of the different varieties. He has conserved 26 local
varieties of finger millet and six of suan
(little millet) with support and motivation from RESMISA project for the last two
years. This year, he grew 37 varieties of both local and improved varieties of Mandia. He has actively participated in establishing
community seed bank at his village with the support of DHAN Foundation. This is
a good initiative for the preservation of different varieties of Mandai, Suan,
Alasi (niger), Kolatha (Horsegram), Kanduala (Redgram), etc.
He continuously tries
to have a new idea of doing cultivation. He participated in Project Advisory
Committee meeting at Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu where he could know there are a lot of research going on millet cultivation. He has made one line sowing
marker which is very useful for making line for research plots. He visited
Berhampur research centre and were inspired for growing Mandia and suan in an improved way like inter-crop with pulses and line sowing.
He
participated in one meeting organized by Bioversity International in New Delhi.
He was extremely happy to share his experience of conserving different
varieties of Mandia, suan and other
vegetables. It gave him a new understanding of different varieties. He attends
many workshops organized for agriculture interventions in order to enhance
skills which will be useful for more production.
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