Bringing innovation to the small farm for a bumper crop
LUCKNOW: A farmer shooed away a young man in 2008 when he asked to borrow the man’s mechanical seed sower, a novelty those days in villages of Uttar Pradesh’s Bahraich district.
Shailendra Awasthi was humiliated. The angry man murmured a vow to himself before leaving: “Take it from me, tomorrow farmers like you will line up for guidance from me.”
True to his promise, the 32-year-old Shailendra is now an expert dishing out advice to farmers on scientific techniques to enhance farm productivity.
The man from Asmanpur village under Mahasi block in Bahraich has become an award-winning agri-consultant.
His success lies in growing 125 quintals of paddy on a single hectare, using a technique called system of rice intensification (SRI).
“Before I adopted SRI (in 2009), I was producing 35 quintals a hectare,” he says.
He has eight hectares and grows paddy on 50% of his land every year. “Instead of planting three-week-old rice seedlings, I plant young seedlings (10-15 days old) by maintaining a distance at 25cm intervals in a grid pattern,” he explains.
He has convinced a farmer in a neighbouring village to try the line-sowing technique for wheat.
“He gets three quintals a hectare. But I told him he will get 50 quintals or more from each hectare. And I promised to compensate any shortfall,” he says.
Shailendra provides free consultancy to farmers and visits fields to monitor crops grown in accordance with his advice.
“I have all major farm implements and rent them out,” he says.
He believes agriculture is a profitable venture, if “it is done with a little application of the mind”.