2-day little millet harvest festival begins at Araku

A two-day Little Millet Crop Harvest Festival, organised by Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN), an NGO, commenced astatine Araku successful ASR territory connected Monday

Due to declining yields, galore tribal farmers person been gradually replacing their accepted crops specified arsenic Ragi and Little Millet with commercialized crops similar turmeric and ginger. Given the precocious nutritional worth of millets, it is important to beforehand and heighten their productivity to marque millet cultivation much remunerative, peculiarly done Crop Intensification methods based connected Natural Farming principles, says ML Sanyasi Rao, Associate Director of WASSAN (Watershed Support Services and Activities Network).

WASSAN has been moving intimately with tribal farmers to amended millet productivity and has achieved encouraging results. About 100 farmers practised the System of Millet Intensification (SMI) during the past Kharif play and are present acceptable for harvest and technological evaluation. The Agriculture Department and University scientists are besides collaborating successful these trials.

So far, 5 experiments person been conducted, which amusement that farmers achieved up to 3 times higher yields compared to accepted methods — astir 1 ton of atom per acre, against the accustomed 3 quintals per acre. Through this approach, Little Millet farmers are present earning astir ₹40,000 per acre, marking a important betterment and offering large imaginable for upscaling millet cultivation among tribal communities.

Little Millet (Panicum sumatrense), locally known arsenic Peddasama, is cultivated connected rain-fed adust lands.

Little Millet is cultivated successful implicit 6,605 acres, wrong ASR territory unsocial accounting for 87% of the full area. However, nether the accepted broadcasting method, the mean output is lone 544 kg per hectare, limiting profitability.

As portion of the Millet Harvesting Festivals, WASSAN scheduled a bid of Crop Cutting Experiments (CCEs) crossed the Araku–Paderu region. These events brought unneurotic officials from the Agriculture Department, scientists from ANGRAU, representatives from SERP and RYSS, and Gram Panchayat leaders to prosecute with millet farmers adopting the ‘SIRI SAMA’ method.

A Crop Cutting Experiment (CCE) conducted connected November 10 successful the tract of Lokkai Raghunadh of Gorapur colony recorded a output of 1,840 kg per hectare, portion Bakaa Jayalakshmi of Sovva colony achieved 2,520 kg per hectare. The yields were measured utilizing the modular 5 m² crippled method and verified with integer moisture meters. Notably, the aforesaid tract had produced lone 550 kg per hectare past twelvemonth nether accepted cultivation practices, said Mr. Sanyasi Rao of WASSAN.