Crusading for organic farming

While most farmers are behind the conventional ways of farming and increasing the yield, commerce graduate Addala Gopalakrishna has been crusading for organic farming for more than two decades. Not only this, he has also motivated thousands of farmers to take up organic farming over the years. With the inspiration got from him, 3,600 farmers have set up Vormi composts in their fields.

Gopalakrishna strongly believes that only organic farming can protect land and health. He had set up the ‘Rythumitra Rural technology Park’ to educate and help farmers in taking up organic farming. In an interaction with CityTAB, the winner of ‘National Virtual Academy Fellowship’ from MS Swaminathan Foundation, Gopalakrishna speaks about his path and what motivated him to take it up.

Speaking about his foray into organic farming and what led him towards it, Gopalakrishna said, “A farmer spends about Rs 10 to Rs 14 thousand on fertilisers and pesticides for each acre. This thing hurt me when I entered into agriculture after my post graduation in commerce. I wanted to educate farmers on organic farming, through which they can get healthy yield with low investments.”

It costs mere Rs 24,000 to cultivate paddy in one acre of land through organic farming. Moreover, it enhances the health of the crop and increases the yield,” the 23-years-old farmer adds. Gopalakrishna maintained that he has toiled for over a decade to know how effective organic farming was.

“Organic farming will definitely match to costly usage of fertilisers and pesticides though organic farming will not yield many fruits on the first crop,” Addala said while elucidating how a farmer could get cent per cent returns from the third crop, which would continue to happen.

He mentioned that the farmer would get 33 per cent yield in the first crop, 78 per cent for the second crop and 100 per cent from the third crop onwards. He maintained that his endeavour would be to cut down the gap between the production cost and minimum support price.

Gopalakrishna has also convinced the State government to release one crore rupees through agriculture department to distribute bio-fertilisers to farmers and boost organic farming. Experiencing the benefits of bio-fertilisers, farmers have started to use it instead of chemical fertilizers. Now, more than 5,000 farmers follow Gopalakrishna on organic farming while many more get tips from him on their mobiles.

By Samson Raj