School students celebrated their love for the land, soil and nature at the Children's Agriculture Science Congress jointly organised by Agri Friends Krishi Samskarika Vedi, Centre for Innovation in Science and Social Action, and Indian Agriculture Association in Thiruvananthapuram recently.
Around 300 school students participated in the two-day event which was inaugurated by Transport Minister Jose Thettayil. A host of competitions based on farming experiences of students and agriculture research projects were organised at the programme the focal theme of which was organic farming.
Winners
Events included paper presentation on local agriculture practices, school level farming and ‘My farming experiences', farm photo exhibition, agriculture tools and produces exhibition and poster presentation.
SN Upper Primary School, Kollayil, emerged the overall winners at the end of the event. The school won the award for their ‘Children's farm village' and ‘Krishi sena' projects. The award for the best research team went to Mannam Memorial Residential English Medium Higher Secondary School for their project on quality of soil. Students of Thevanpara Kristhukiran School won the award for the best school level farming initiative for their ‘Cheeragramom' project.
In the individual events' category Shilpa Shashankan of Christ Nagar English Medium School won the first prize for best research paper presentation. V.R. Vijitha of PKM High School bagged the first prize in the ‘My farming experiences' section for her presentation on cabbage and cauliflower cultivation. In the ‘Local farming practices' category Deepthi of Vazhakadu VHS, Wayanad, bagged the top honours.
All about nature
“The whole idea of this event was to bring our future generation closer to agriculture and thus closer to nature and provide them a platform to share their experiences in farming in their school or home. The event has also helped in encouraging students to take up scientific studies on agriculture and thus build up their interest in farming,” said Agri Friends project coordinator S. Jayakumar.
The Children's Agriculture Science Congress also included talks and presentations by agriculturists and scientists including Dr R. Gopimani, FAO consultant K. Gopalakrishnan, CTCRI scientist, Unnikrishnan and farm journalist C.S. Ajithlal. A film ‘I am green' made by students of Kuttikadu UPS was also screened at the event.
Prizes were given by city mayor K. Chandrika and former Agriculture Department director R. Heli at the valedictory ceremony. Model farmers Ulloor Raveendran, Manoharan Nair and Thevanpara Santhosh, who interacted with the students during the course of the event, were felicitated at the function.
The focal theme of the Third Children's Agriculture Science Congress ‘Our agriculture' was announced at the function.
