A journey that begins back from 2008:
With the start of 21st century, village farmers were beaten to back in fight of insect control by mighty and incontrollable insects like American Sundi in cotton crops and Brown Fudka in paddy crop. Even after the use of pesticides, farmers were perplexed by dominating presence of insects. So with a mission to bring this problem to an end, in December 2008 an insect study and management formula was constituted by taking cotton crop as a sample. A workshop with active participation from farmers was constituted and initialized in village by Agriculture Department of Haryana. This workshop concluded two major points, one that the number of cotton plants per acre is very less, second farmers avail a very little knowledge on insects. |
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Women attending Farmer School |
Workshop 2009: Thus to build a better understanding of crop-wise field insects, a farmers own financially aided “
Apna Khet-Apni Pathshala” named Insect Management Workshop was organized. This workshop went from June to October on every Tuesday, and resulted in recognition and information collection on around two dozen vegetarian and four dozen non-vegetarian insects found in cotton crop fields. Same workshop researched that the spray of 5.5% Zinc + Urea + D.A.P. in cotton crop not only increase the nutrition but kills many small insects. As a result first time ever since the usage of pesticides came in to pattern, around one dozen of farmers produced cotton crop without using a single ounce of any insecticide. In the same year the farmers like Sh. Ranveer Malik and Manvir Redhu, learned the computer and started writing their own blogs on insect studies like
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कीट साक्षरता केंद्र, निडाना
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प्रभात कीट पाठशाला
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कृषि चौपाल
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निडाना गाम का गोरा
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नौगामा
And on the same time the pictures and
विडिओ of different
शाकाहारी and
मांसाहारी insects seen and found in cotton crop were uploaded on internet.
Workshop 2010: By now the Nidana women started spearheading the home as well as the agro fields. The workshop of 2010 was organized on every Tuesday from month of June to October under the surveillance of Agriculture Department of Haryana. Out of the total thirty women participants of this workshop only six were literate. From the very beginning of workshop every activity was written on blog with title
"महिला खेत पाठशाला". Kumari Mini and Smt. Sudesh took the charge of associate writers. The activities of this workshop earned a good coverage in print
प्रिंट as well as digital (
एक,
दो,
तीन) media. Mission became so popular that farmers from other districts of Haryana and Punjab, media personnel, agro officers, scientists and professors also organized the seminars and conferences to study outputs of this workshop and discussed with and debated the Nidana village ladies on same. On 25th December 2010, Agriculture Department of Haryana organized “Khet Diwas” in which the village women portrayed the attained insect’s knowledge on flash boards and folklores in presence of thousands of farmers of Nidana and neighboring villages, agro officers and scientists.
Workshop 2011: In 2011, six out of these women trained the students of Daffodil Public School of Nidana on insects as master trainers under “Parivesh Pathshala”. Village farmers have recognized more than 107 types of insects found in single cotton crop. Out of which 80 are found as non-vegetarian and 27 vegetarian. Out of these vegetarian insects only 3-4 are found injurious to crop. Out of these
43 कीटों क़ी पहचान क़ी पुष्टि are officially confirmed. More than six dozen farmers of Nidana have accredited the role of non-vegetarian insects in controlling or consuming the vegetarian insects and with affirmed testing they are now doing the insecticides’ poison free agriculture.
