Final year students of B.Sc. Agriculture and Bio-Technology are spending their study holidays in villages. As many as 138 students have been under the Rural Agricultural Work Experience (RAWE) programme in six villages of Channarayapatna taluk. They have to spend three months amidst farmers to pick up agriculture experience and understand farming.
The Agriculture College at Karekere chose to focus Channarayapatna taluk this year and sent its final year students to Vaddarahalli, Hirebilthi, Chikkabelthi, Jattenahalli, Ajjenahalli and Baralu. They have to understand the problems related to agriculture in the villages and find solutions for the same.
The students have developed demonstration plots, set up information centres, conducted awareness programmes to educate farmers about trends in agriculture. “The problem we noticed in coconut farms is stem-bleeding. It is rampant in all farms in the taluk. We have done demonstrations on how to fight it with medicines at Raitha Samparka Kendra,” said Girish Kashyap, part of the students’ team at Vaddarahaalli.
Each student has been attached to five coconut farmers. He or she has to visit the farms and show farmers how to apply for medicines. “This has been a successful exercise. Hundreds of farmers have benefited by this,” said R. Vinay Kumar, RAWE coordinator, and faculty at the college. The idea behind choosing villages in Channarayapatna taluk was to address problems affecting coconut farms, he said.
The demonstration plots consist of 40 varieties of crops. “We have developed plots in farmlands of local farmers. The idea is to make people aware of new crop varieties and get better yield. We could do all this because of the cooperation of the people,” said Shashank H.U., a student at Chikkabilthi village.
The students have conducted more than 50 programmes in each village on various issues. Special stress mushroom culture has attracted the attention of many villagers. Pavithra B., a student at Vaddarahalli, said a farmer had already started mushroom culture at home following a demonstration.
“We want to see the result of our work before we wind up our three-month programme,” she said.