Aiming at 1,000 farmer-scientists across AP in next 4 yrs: IGAARL

Guntur: The Indo-German Global Academy for Agro-Ecological Research and Learning (IGAARL), situated at Pulivendula aims at producing 1,000 farmer-scientists in the next four years, said executive vice-chairman of Ryot Sadhikara Samstha (RySS) Vijay Kumar Thallam.

Ryot Sadhikara Samstha is an arm of the Natural Farming wing of the Andhra Pradesh Agriculture Department.

Addressing the mentors training programme here on Sunday, Vijay Kumar said that the mentors should be available to the farmers across the State to help them to adapt to natural farming. “Every mentor should be adept at handling natural farming with all information regarding it and help the farmers like soldiers to control environment pollution.”

According to Vijay Kumar, other State governments and even foreign countries have been evincing interest in natural farming being promoted by the RySS.

RySS consultants Muralidhar and Dr Varaprasad said mentors had the ominous responsibility to make farmer-scientists. The mentors should be available to the farmers at least two days in a month to extend advice to them.

The tenure of the course of the farmer-scientist is four years and two months with eight semesters and by the end of the course, they would be having complete understanding of natural farming. During the course period, there would be 250 credit points (score) in which the farmer-scientists need to prove their ability in natural farming and their experiments in the field.

The course would include the classroom teaching and the practicals in the fields. Out of 250 credits, one hundred and fifty credits would be for the practical experience and one hundred credits for classroom lessons.

The consultants elaborated on various subjects including the difference between agriculture and agriculture ecology, the relation between the five elements and agriculture, food security, nutrition security, pest management, crop management and others.

Earlier, the names of the mentor-trainees were registered after verifying the certificates. They were given the course material.

Senior thematic lead Zakir Hussain, thematic lead Dharmendra and Visweswara Rao and others participated.