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Growing of millets stressed at Bio diversity Festival
In an age when industrialised farming has become the order of the day, one organisation has shown the way to preserving bio-diversity through Organic Millet Farming. Deccan Development Society (DDS), which has adopted 45 villages in Medak District for over twenty five years, has celebrated their 16th Mobile Bio-Diversity Festival at Kottapalli Village (Husselli), Nyalkal Mandal, Medak District, on Wednesday.
Sangareddy: In an age when industrialised farming has become the order of the day, one organisation has shown the way to preserving bio-diversity through Organic Millet Farming. Deccan Development Society (DDS), which has adopted 45 villages in Medak District for over twenty five years, has celebrated their 16th Mobile Bio-Diversity Festival at Kottapalli Village (Husselli), Nyalkal Mandal, Medak District, on Wednesday.
The event is called Paata Pantala Jatara, and is celebrated with music, dance and a spectacular show of Millet grains and other crops grown locally by the farmers using organic farming. The grains are well decorated and placed on bullock carts and paraded, as men and women dance in front of the bullocks.
Speaking at the event, B V Sateesh, Director, DDS, said India as a nation should become cotton-free as it was a killer crop which did not help much to the farmers and also spoiled the fertility of the land. He hoped that the State government would also give subsidy to the tune of Rs 5,000 an acre as assistance to farmers growing Millets as it was done in Karnataka State.
He added that the food grains produced by the farmers in the adopted villages are already being used in the Anganwadi centres and hoped that the State government would follow the central government’s instructions and also use them in schools for feeding schoolchildren and for other purposes.
Andreas Riekeberg, Coordinator, Campaign for Seed Sovereignty, Germany, said the situation was not much different in Germany, where many farmers had lost seed sovereignty, leaving only a small number of farmers using traditional farming methods.
He added that the farmers in Germany had to pay royalty for producing seeds and even the European Union had tried to come up with a law to restrict production and sale of traditional varieties of seeds but it was defeated in the parliament.
S Galab, Director, CESS, Hyderabad, the Chief Guest for the event, praised DDS for bringing about a revolution in bio-diversity, making 50 per cent of women as participants. He said that people’s organisations needed to strive to make the state and central governments to encourage Millet farming.
