Amid lockdown, private school focuses on organic farming

Amid the uncertainty prevailing over reopening of schools, a private school in Coimbatore has been utilising its premises for organic farming since May with the support of its faculty members.

Eight teachers and three non-teaching faculty members of St. John’s Matriculation Higher Secondary School in Press Colony has been involved in cultivating over 10 different types of crops including groundnut, sunflower, tomato, corn and pumpkin.

The school principal. P. Baskar. said that the cultivation of groundnut and sunflower was being carried out in nearly 0.75 acres of the school ground, while the other crops were being cultivated in about 40 cents of land. The school started terrace farming in 2016 to educate the students, Mr. Baskar recalled. However, as the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown came into force, he consulted the school correspondent R.P. Aravinthan and the management on whether organic farming could be carried out on the school premises.

“We started ploughing the ground in May,” he said.

As the residences of 11 volunteers were close to the school, they were able to come to the school amid the lockdown, he said.

After three months, the school has seen the yield of nearly 200 kg of cucumber and about 40 kg of oyster mushrooms, he said.

“We have collected the native seeds required for organic farming,” Mr. Baskar said.

A. Sakthivel, a Tamil teacher for Classes X, XI and XII, said that the teachers have been conducting online classes from 10 a.m. to 12 noon and engage in the farming activities in the afternoon. “We feel stressed after conducting online classes, so these farming activities help us to de-stress,” he remarked.