‘It’s been an eye-opener to see farmers’ lives’

BENGALURU: For the last 10 months, Kazuki Saito, a Japanese volunteer, has been experiencing the rural side to Bengaluru. Saito, who is here as part of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) programme, has been staying with farmers in Ramanagaram to understand the problems they face.

The 20-something student hailing from Chiba has learnt basic Kannada to facilitate his interaction. Armed with a bachelors in economics, which he completed in Japan in March 2018, he wanted to see how research and statistics could help the agricultural field.  

Saito, who particularly worked with sericulture farmers, spent a few of days at the houses of farmers where he observed their lifestyle – waking up at 4am, women folk going ahead with house work while men headed out to cut mulberry, and returning after a long day at work. “I regularly ate raagi balls, dosa, rice and curry with my fingers,” he says with a laugh.

Saito’s findings showed that the average age of farmers is 40.9 years, their net annual income is `1,68,452 and cocoon production is 97.9 kg per month. He also conducted some awareness programmes on composting, hygienic agricultural practices, including clean hands while handling crops, and cocoon crafting as part of the social development initiative.  

There are, however, some things that have taken him aback, one of them being the caste politics. “I was so surprised to come across the fact that subsidy amount differs for farmers of some castes,” says Saito. He found that while Japan is technologically advanced and uses a lot of machinery in the agro space, farming here is labour intensive. “It’s been a real eye-opener to see and understand the lives of farmers. It’s quite different back home where there aren’t as any farmers,” says Saito, who will put together his findings with those of his counterparts in Tamil Nadu and Uttarakhand. The students are in India as part of an initiative by JICA, an independent administrative institution under the Government of Japan, established with the aim of promoting international cooperation. JICA works as a bridge between Japan and emerging countries, and provides assistance in forms of loan, grant and technical cooperation in an integrated manner so that the developing countries can strengthen their capacities.