Toyota Foundation Helps Our Club Acquire Mechanical Paddy Transplanter
Posted in Announcements on 08. Jul, 2010
The Energy & Resources Institute’s (TERI) Western Regional Center, under one of its projects supported by the Toyota Foundation (Japan), has helped the Chorao Farmers Club acquire a Mechanical Paddy Transplanter. With part funding through TERI’s project and part assistance from the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY), the Chorao Farmers Club has purchased their first 8-Row Paddy Transplanter, from Goa Tractor and Tillers.
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After experimenting with the transplanter last year, the Chorao Farmers Club decided to acquire this machine, which is also being used by six other farmers groups across the state. The Department of Agriculture is encouraging the transplanter in an attempt to modernise farming practices and provide farmers with an alternative to unreliable, often unavailable or expensive labour.
The Chorao Farmers Club, with assistance from the Department of Agriculture will transplant the Jyoti variety of red kernel rice in the villages of Chodan and Madel (5 ha each village) over the next 7-8 days.
The Farmers Club has resolved to avoid the use of chemical weedicides and pesticides as they believe these may be harmful in the long term and have been assisted by the Agriculture Department in identifying alternative methods of crop protection.
Says Gita Uskaikar from Chodan, who has recently been trained to raise the nursery as needed for the machine, “It is easy to raise this special nursery, but farmers must do it themselves on-site since it makes the process of transplantation easier. Now that our Club has its own machine, we will be able to systematically transplant paddy seedlings across the village”. The time saved while transplanting by using the machine is significant. The Club transplanted 1.5 ha (6000m2) in 5 hours, which would have otherwise taken four women, working together five days to complete.
Yogita Mehra from TERI adds, “There is much excitement among our farmers as they are keen to see the results and use the machine to revive the practice of winter paddy cropping in the village”.
Over the next year, the Chorao Farmers Club is also looking to acquire additional farm machinery that can help improve productivity and efficiency of their farming practices. This aspiration of the Club is going to continue to be supported financially by TERI and the Toyota Foundation, in addition to the support that will be provided for building entrepreneurial skills, providing training for new technologies and crops and innovative experiments in marketing and brand building.
