Laxman Sahu has been growing vegetables besides the
staple crop of rice. He lived in a remote hillside village
called Karlaguda, with his wife and daughter Baladini.
The village is in Golamunda Block of Kalahandi District,
near the border of Chhattisgarh. Baladini (24), a high
school dropout worked closely with her father and passed
on to him whatever information on advances in agriculture
she gathered from newspapers and other sources.
As a
result, the Sahus were more successful as vegetable
growers than other farmers of their area. When Baladini
came to know about the starting of agricultural extension
services by KARRTABYA (initiated with full support from
Syngenta Foundation India ), she encouraged Laxman to
attend their farmers workshops so that he gets to know
about recent developments in agricultural practices
and follow these in their own farming.
As she was keen
to find out how to make their vegetable growing more
profitable, she along with Laxman visited KARRTABYA's
farm extension centre at Bandakutura and consulted Jishaya
Tandia, their program coordinator. Tandia told them
about the best practices of growing different kinds
of vegetables and against their specific query, gave
the names of some promising hybrids of hot pepper (chilli).
Based on Tandia's advice, Baladini and Laxman took home
the seeds of 'Roshni', 'HPH 117', 'HPH 404' and Flame
Hot from KARRTABYA's Extension Centre.
In the rabi season of 2006 - 07, they cultivated these
hybrids in about one acre of their leased land in Chura
Dangar, 2 km from their home. Most area was covered
by Roshni and the least by Flame Hot. The source of
irrigation was a mountain stream flowing nearby. From
seedling raising to harvesting, they took every care
of the crop as recommended by Tandia and Mr Janmejaya
Nayak and other experts from the District Agriculture
Office, Dharamgarh.
The concerted efforts of Baladini
and Laxman resulted in a bumper crop as they made a
total harvest of 10 quintals of dry red chillies from
one acre, fetching them an unprecedented income of Rs
1.5 lakh from the sale of this produce. Their net profit
after meeting all costs, came close to one lakh. This
being the most outstanding feat achieved by any farmer
in KARRTABYA's extension project area, a bus-load of
local farmers was taken to Sahus' chilli fields to show
them the standing crop that was in its final stages
of harvest. All were greatly impressed by seeing such
prolific harvests and some of them decided on the spot
to follow the path of the Sahus.
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FIELD
STORies
Laxman Sahu has been growing vegetables
besides the staple crop of rice. He lived in a remote
hillside village called Karlaguda, with his wife and
daughter Baladini.
Twenty seven year old Achyutananda
Naik of Village Balichhada joined hands with his father
Sanatana into their two-acre family farm after Class
IX.
Prakash Chandra Panda is perhaps the only one in the 10 km radius of his native Village Kanakpur to possess a first-class M Phil degree in geography and a B Ed.
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