Dr. Kh. Chandrakumar Singh
Subject Matter Specialist (SMS), Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK), North Sikkim
“Everything else can wait, but not Agriculture”, – Jawaharlal Nehru.
It has gone the days when people un-favoured Agriculture and allied activities. With the development and modernization, the thinking of people, particularly the youths change and eventually move to other places even several miles away expecting for a better livelihood and in some cases to support their family. The same has been noticed at Manipur also. The reason for this issue is the lack of awareness of the scope and need of Agriculture. Besides, the cultivated area for Agriculture is alarmingly declining throughout the globe, creating a challenging situation for producing more and more foods from relatively lesser areas as earlier. Multiple cropping (dual, triple etc.), intercropping (growing of crops between the empty space of growing crops) etc. could be mentioned as some of the strategies to achieve greater production from limited areas.
Food (Agriculture) is one of the basic needs of a human being after air and water. Fortunately, in few places of Manipur, the cultivation of different seasonal crops throughout the year is being practised. At Kakching Khunou (Manipur), cultivation of cucurbit family crops is being satisfactorily done in few areas which proved to be huge earning. This is a great achievement to the world of Agriculture and attracted the Government for available resources and encouraging the growers. All the farmers use a huge amount of different fertilizers for growing different crops and most of them presume cultivation of different crops throughout the year at the same land results in exhaustion of available nutrients. Of course, the crops use nutrient absorb nutrients from the soil and many a time a considerable amount of nutrients remained deposited to the soil year after year. In the end, the soil becomes excessive of multiple nutrients. Therefore, application of fertilizers only the amount required is very much necessary which could be performed after soil testing. For this purpose soil health card is being issued by concerned authorities after soil testing. As a supplementary nutrient application (particularly nitrogen) growing of pulses (hawai) helps in the enrichment of nitrogen in the soil by capturing nitrogen from the atmosphere which could effectively be used by succeeding crops. So, a cropping system or scheme could be made considering mutual encouragement among the crops. For instance, after rice cultivation, any pulse (pea, lentil, beans, broad beans etc.) can be grown and after pulse, vegetables can be grown (Rice-Pulse-Vegetables). It should definitely be kept in mind that whenever we go for multiple cropping systems we must select short duration crops. To encourage youths (age between 18-35 years) and to sustain Agriculture, the Government of India launched a scheme called ARYA (Attracting and Retaining Youths in Agriculture). The scheme reaches to youth through different Govt. and non-Govt. organizations like KVKs. The scheme aims in training the youths for different necessary skills in dealing Agricultural activities like growing of seasonal crops, raring of different farm birds and animals etc. The Govt. provides the necessary inputs too with the aim that the youth can apply the skills himself/ herself after being trained to make them successfully run his/her own farm. After conducting different studies like PRA (participatory rural appraisal) for particular areas, youths are selected for training under this scheme.
In the case of availability of lesser farmland, youths are attracted to vertical farming, which involves the cultivation of crops in rack systems. This new approach will ensure attracting and retaining the youths for Sustaining Agriculture and bring towards a better livelihood.
