It was a festival with a difference at the sleepy village of Parappana on the outskirts of Palakkad town on Sunday.
A large number of technocrats descended there to join the local farmers in transplanting paddy seedlings on over 70 acres of fields.
To add colour, contests such as mud football, fish catching, swimming, mud athletics and paddy transplanting were also organised.
Veteran farmers were honoured at a meeting, with the entire gathering listening to their recollections.
The festival was organised by a group of technocrats to initiate group-farming of paddy in the State.
K. Suresh, a former technocrat with Infosys, said he and his friends launched a start-up, Farmers’ Collective, last year to promote cultivation of pesticide-free paddy using scientific agricultural practices in select parts of the State, including Parappana, a stone’s throw from littérateur O.V. Vijayan’s celebrated village Thasrak.
The technocrats will invest capital and provide scientific farming inputs and the farmers can take up pesticide-free cultivation, without worrying about the marketing and cost-expenditure aspects.
Along with paddy cultivation, the farmers will also take up duck rearing and fish farming for additional revenue.
No organic tag
“Last year, we made a humble beginning in Mankurissi in Palakkad, cultivating 20 acres. Now, it is being extended to Parappana and several other places, including the Kole wetlands of Thrissur. The aim is to help farmers approach paddy cultivation with confidence. We will not use pesticides but the rice will not be classified organic,” he explained.
Jafar Kondotty, coordinator of the collective, said the experiment in the village is in collaboration with a dozen local farmers. “Our start-up will find agriculture-loving entrepreneurs to meet the entire expenses of cultivation. The farmers need not spend on farming,” he said.
Last year, the crop was sold in various IT parks.
Of the revenue generated, the farmers will get 60% and the collective, 20%.
The remaining 20% will be set aside as next year’s capital.
e-commerce
The farmers’ collective is now formulating an e-commerce platform to sell the rice across the globe. “We will procure the crop at a price higher than that of the government’s procurement agencies. Farmers will not lose money as the crops will be insured,” said Jinu Thomas, another coordinator.
Parappana farmers will rear 2,000 ducks along with the paddy in the coming months.
