A village in Doddaballapur taluk near Bengaluru can perhaps be a role model for North India, which suffers from smog during the winter season due to burning of farm waste.
Neralaghatta village and its surroundings that have areca plantations used to burn areca husk during the winter as farmers considered it a waste. But, thanks to innovative farmer Lakshminarayana Gowda, who showed that the husk can be turned into a nutrient rich compost, the village stopped the practice of burning areca husk one-and-half decades ago.
“I noticed that plants near a dump of areca husk had grown well. This made me experiment with decomposting the husk. I added various elements to enrich it. In the course of time, the local Krishi Vigyana Kendra at Hadonahalli advised me to add certain bio-fertilisers during decomposition of areca husk so that the method is scientific,” says Mr. Gowda.
“My experiment showed that the compost has helped increase my areca nut yield by nearly 30%. Another advantage is that I have now completely stopped using chemical fertilisers, which would have cost over ₹1.5 lakh a year,” Mr. Gowda told The Hindu. Soon, the idea caught up with fellow villagers.
Areca husk compost is not completely new as scientists have now developed a scientific way of doing this. But Mr. Gowda shot to fame as he did it in 2001-02 and contributed to environmental protection by popularising it among fellow villagers.
Recognising his innovation, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) included him among the 300 innovative farmers who had been invited from across the country to take part in the Farm Science Congress that was organised as part of the Indian Science Congress in Bengaluru on Monday.
Mr. Gowda said he was satisfied that all the villagers had adopted his practice. Referring to the reports that several north Indian cities suffer from the problem of smog due to burning of agricultural waste, he wondered why a similar method should not be tried there.
