India Promotes Organic Produce Farming

On December 5, Golden Year 6 (2009), the Commissioner of Agriculture of Maharashtra State in India, Mr. Prabhakar Deshmukh, was presented the Shining World Leadership Award by representatives of Supreme Master Ching Hai. The Award recognised the State’s outstanding eco-friendly efforts to promote the health and stability of our environment through wholesome organic farming. To reverse the damage of prolonged chemical fertiliser and pesticide use to both land and farmers, the State Government has approved a fund of 33.5 million Rupees (approx. US$743,000) for a year-long project to organise 320 training classes to approximately 6,500 farmers in the state. Once a grower completes the course, they will be expected to allocate at least one hectare of land to this agricultural method. In addition, certification is also being made available for those who wish to export their produce.

In the Award letter, Master wrote, “The system will create 6,500 hectares of land under organic farming and once this significant milestone is achieved, it will create a ripple effect, attracting and inspiring many more to follow.” Together with the Award, Master also contributed US$10,000 for the government to award the first and the best farmers who convert to the organic method. 

Our accolades to the esteemed leaders of Maharashtra for your great foresight and outstanding governance. Blessed be all such endeavours to share the wholesome and plentiful benefits of organic vegan farming.

Crop Pest Surveillance and Advisory Project – for pest management on major crops in Maharashtra

The project was undertaken in the backdrop of severe outbreak on soybean crop during 2008-09 in Maharashtra that resulted into crop losses over an area of 9 lakh ha (i.e.63% of sown area) causing losses to tune of Rs.1,392 crore. State Government had given compensation worth Rs.450 crore to the farmers. Team of experts deputed by Government of India submitted their observations and recommendations. An initiative was taken by the Commissionerate of Agriculture in technical collaboration with NCIPM, New Delhi to formulate long-term strategy to deal with situation. First time in the country, a multi-stakeholder project involving Crop Research Institutes of National level, State Agriculture Universities and State Department of Agriculture was prepared and implemented through RKVY. Effective use of ICT was made in the project. Scientific pest monitoring on real-time basis was first time made possible in the country. The project covers entire area under Rice, Soybean, Cotton, Tur and Gram crop. The area coverage under project is 112.19 lakh hectares.

Highlights

1. Earlier system of pest monitoring was based on visual observations and was found inadequate for proper detection of pest problems.
2. Scientific Software was developed to analyze the data on-line.
3. Effective use of ICT was made for rapid data transmission and issue of   advisories to farmer.
4. Considering the multi-tasking nature of duties of departmental staff 835 pest scouts and 84 data entry operators were appointed on contractual basis exclusively for the project.
5. Connectivity was provided to all the stakeholders. Software and technical training is imparted to field staff.
6. Observations were recorded every Monday-Tuesday and Thursday-Friday from fixed plots and random plots. On every Wednesday and Saturday on-line data entry was done. Analyzed data was made available on-line to the experts to assist field officer. The SMS messages of measures to be adopted were passed to farmers every Thursday and Monday.
7. Detail advisories pasted at Gram Panchayat. Wide publicity was done through print and electronic media.
8. Village level meeting conducted weekly to guide the farmers.
9. Pesticides supplied on 50% subsidy wherever the pest situation is above ETL.
10. Rigorous monitoring at all levels.
11. Pest population data superimposed on weather parameter data through GIS maps to develop correlation of pest population dynamics for developing pest forecasting models.

Impact

Since inception of project there is no outbreak of any major pests on selected crops.

Impact Analysis

Year	No. of Subscribers for SMS (Lakh)	No. of advisories Issued (No)	No. of SMS Sent (Lakh)	Use of Bio-pesticides
2009-10	1.63	13517	31.93	1788
2010-11	2.40	55602	112.0	22
2011-12	3.11	62410	199.06	2500
2012-13	3.40	62515	360.83	2800

Since inception of project number of farmers enrolled for SMS service has doubled, advisories issued has increased by 4.63 times, SMS send increased by 11.30 times and shift towards use of bio-pesticides increased by 1.57 times. These figures are self indicative of farmers response to the project.

Cooperative Farming will help to develop the agriculture

Agriculture in India has a significant history. 70% of the population is dependent on farming as means of livelihood. As the result, it is a more manual driven process rather than technologically advanced process, resulting in poor yield and output. This opinion was made by Mr. Prabhakar Deshmukh, Commissioner of Pune while addressing at the first Rural Entrepreneurship Seminar at Baramati. He was talking on the topic of ‘how do agri-entreprenuerships contribute to the rural economy’. Mr. Sudarshan Suryavanshi (ISAP), Mr. Rajesh Urkude(head of m-KRISHI project), Mr. Abdul Rehman Ilyas (CEO-IKP center, Hyderabad) Shared dais to deliver valuable information about agri entreprenuership in this 2 days conference.

Mr. Prabhakar said, with cooperative farming, these drawbacks can be addressed and taken into consideration. He also emphasis that there is considerable soil degeneration and the Nitrogen levels in the soil were depleting since the last 30 years. With cooperative farming, it was possible to do farming in a scientific manner, using technology and generating better results and yields. Systematic grading and packaging will give quality assurance and better market prices. Involving women in the decision making and putting systems in place can generate immense work opportunities in the sector.

Jalyukt Shivar

The government in Maharashtra has undertaken an integrated water conservation and management initiative (Jalyukt Shivar) which aims to make 5,000 villages scarcity-free in the first phase in 2015-16.The ambitious programme, aimed at making the state scarcity-free in five years, will involve construction of a series of check dams, rejuvenation of old check dams and repair of Kolhapur Type (KT) weirs and storage tanks, Water Conservation department secretary Prabhakar Deshmukh told PTI.

The Jalyukt Shivar initiative will also involve repair of percolation tanks, desilting village percolation tanks and connecting stream/nullahs with water storage bodies.The project will first be implemented in 5,000 villages where water scarcity is most acute, he said, adding that the villages have been identified.

Prabhakar Deshmukh, as divisional commissioner of Pune, had earlier implemented a similar water conservation programme in five districts of Pune division which he claimed led to demand for water tankers in villages going down by 70 to 80 per cent and also resulted in water table going up.To counter the severe drought in 2012-13, the previous government had taken up construction of cement check dams, and deepening of local water sources in a big way.

E-Governance award

Organised by the Government of India’s Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances, the 15th National Conference on e-Governance was held on 9-10 February, 2012 at Bhubaneswar, Odisha. The Conference was held at the Convention Centre of KIIT University, Bhubaneswar.At the National Conference on e-Governance the Pune divisional commissioner Prabhakar Deshmukh was felicitated with the award in Bhubaneshwar in recognition of his exemplary work. Maharashtra’s State Agriculture Department has been awarded the gold award at the national level of e-governance.

“It is the first-of-it-kind effort to use information technology in agriculture to benefit the farmers. This experiment which was carried out in the state has already been taken up by Orissa and Gujarat governments,’’ said Deshmukh, who is also former state agriculture commissioner.The project recently passed through three stages of screening which won it the gold medal award at the national level category under the “Exemplary Reuse of Information Communication Technology (ICT) based solution” E-governance award for 2011-12. The award was announced by the Ministry of Administrative reforms and Public grievances.The project, which was carried under the title ‘Crop pest surveillance and advisory project’, bagged the award.

Prabhakar Deshmukh said, “It was a detailed chalked out project post the sudden outbreak of the Spodeptera and other leaf eating caterpillars on Soybean crop in Marathwada and Vidarbha regions of the state. In short span the pest incidence spread rapidly affecting 14.64 lakh hectares of crop cultivated in the area of the total 30.63 lakh hectares. The project was taken up as a challenge.’’

Civil Service Day

Shri Narendra Modi, Hon’ble Prime Minister conferred the `Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration’ (2012–13) to Crop Pest Surveillance and Advisory Project (CROPSAP) for pest management in major crops in Maharashtra.

CROPSAP project, a multi-stakeholder initiative was undertaken by Commosssionrate of Agriculture, Pune, ICAR-National Centre for Integrated Pest Management, New Delhi involving other National level Crop Research Institutes (CRIDA-Hyderabad, DOSR-Indore, ICCR-Nagpur, CRRI-Cuttack and IIPR-Kanpur) and State Agriculture Universities (Dr PDKV-Akola, MAU-Parbhani , DBSKKV-Dapoli and MPKV-Rahuri) in the backdrop of severe pest outbreak on soybean crop during 2008-09 in Maharashtra that resulted into crop losses over an area of 9 lakh ha. Since regular and wide area pest monitoring is the cornerstone for pest management so  to automate and speed up the process of pest monitoring, ICAR-NCIPM designed and developed a three tier architecture based system of pest monitoring called “e-Pest surveillance & advisory system”. System also has the provision for submission of pest management advisory to be disseminated to farmers through SMSs. The system was implemented in Maharashtra state covering area of 112.19 lakh hectares under Rice, Soybean, Cotton, Pigeonpea and Chickpea crops.

Use of ICT in pest monitoring helped in providing prompt and reliable pest reports to the concerned agencies on real time basis so as to provide timely and correct advisory to the farmers and thus confirmed the operation of effective monitoring.

Since inception of the project there has been no outbreak of any major pest in the mandated crops. Number of farmers enrolled for SMS service doubled, advisories issued increased by 4.63 times, SMSs sent increased by 11.30 times and shift towards use of bio-pesticides increased by 1.57 times.

On behalf on the Project Sri Prabhakar Deshmukh, then Commissioner of Agriculture, Maharashtra received the award on Ninth Civil Services Day held on 21st April, 2015 organised by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances.