Vast tracts of land in and around Ongole on the Chennai-Kolkata highway are generally left fallow as only one crop tobacco can be grown in a year, that too during winter, as it thrives with just moisture residue in the atmosphere.
One departure from this trend can be seen in Pichikalagudipadu, a few km away from the expressway, as crops are grown all through the year with the farmers adopting Israeli farm technique in the last two years to improve productivity.
Like in other parts, farmers in this remote village, most of them small and marginal, were struggling to get decent returns from their farms till a couple of years ago, thanks to ever-increasing cost of farm inputs, including seeds and fertilizers, and non-remunerative price for their produce.
Now the dusty Pichikalagudipadu in Korisapadu mandal is a village transformed and inspiration for other farmers in the district to making farming a profitable preposition. Farmers grow vegetables, mainly creepers such as snake gourd, ridge gourd, Ivy gourd and bitter gourd all the 365 days by erecting permanent pandals for the creepers, and putting in place micro irrigation system and other farming techniques from Israel, including mulching with micro-perforated plastic film for weed management and phermone traps for pest management.
About 300 km away from Chennai, now the farmers have organised themselves into groups to market their produce directly in the metropolis to maximise their profits by moving within hours the vegetable and fruit crops which have a short life span.
Going down memory lane, a small farmer M. Venktaeswarlu recalls their migration from conventional farming method to modern method with paramount place for micro irrigation (MI) was full of challenges. But after seeing the results of the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY) programme of the State government, a majority of the farmers switched over to the advanced farming system to grow more crops with less water, adds another farmer M. Anjamma, who feeds his crops with water soluble fertilizers through the MI network comprising myriad valves, pipes, and tubes.
Another farmer, E. Harihara Reddy explains the MI system saved them around 30% of production cost and increased productivity by 30%. “Now we are able to get assured income in the range of ₹1.50 lakh to ₹2 lakh per acre,” he adds.
“As many as 100 farmers were provided with subsidised MI system and pandal system to grow crops in about 400 acres. Rest of the farmers in the village will be covered during this year on a saturation basis to make the horticulture sector a growth engine to achieve double digit growth in the farm sector,” says Horticulture Assistant Director M. Hariprasad.
Horticulture Officer from Addanki D. Naveen Kumar adds with the department's intervention comprising permanent pandals, the yields of gourds had grossed 2.5 to three tonne per acre on an average.
