Organic farming yields rich dividends

Sattireddy uses novel methods

Nalgonda: Inspired by Subhash Palekar , a crusader of zero budget natural farming Pisati Sattireddy a retired employee of Medical and Health Department at Veliminadu of Chityala mandal in the district , has became a successful farmer.

Reddy got inspired to take to organic farming when he attended a workshop organised by Palekar at Nagarjuna Sagar in 2008. Since then he is implementing the cow based farming in his 30 acres agriculture land and getting good results.

Sattireddy have been cultivating paddy, vegetables, citrus, lemon mango,sapodilla, potato, pulses and red gram as intercrop in mango orchards. He claims that by practicing organic farming he has been gaining increased benefits year by year to conventional farming practice earlier.

Talking to The Hans India he said he was not using any chemical fertilizers or pesticides in his farm instead he is using vermi compost, drava jeevammrutham, ghana jeevammrutham and other on farm composts for soil enriching and neem cake, cow dung, cow urine, different plant extracts for pest and disease control.

He is also selling his produce as organic rice, organic pulses. According to Reddy now he need not go to market to sell his produce as the costumers are directly approaching him for his organic products.

Sattireddy is also part of the departmental organic farming scheme PKVY and also in district and state level meetings to share his experiences in organic farming to motivate more number of farmers to take up organic farming.

Further he is sharing his experiences through meetings at mandal and district level, radio talks and live TV programs He was awarded at mandal and district level by the Agriculture Department and recently he has been awarded Krishi Ratna Award by SSIAST trust which was handed over by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for practicing organic farming successfully.