Scientists, farmers, students mingle at unique gram sabha

Panaji: In a unique experiment, in line with the National Education Policy’s (NEP) recommendations, a Bambolim school hosted the local gram sabha, giving an opportunity for the students to mingle with the community. Students, teachers, and the invited local representatives, farmers and ICAR-Central Coastal Agricultural Research Institute officials and scientists sat together to discuss local soil health.

PM SHRI Kendriya Vidyalaya, a CBSE-affiliated school, hosted the gram sabha of Curca panchayat to promote institute-community interaction.

The farmers interacted with the scientists from ICAR and the students at the gram sabha. The ICAR officials apprised the farmers on sustainable farming practices, water conservation, and organic farming techniques.

Soil health cards were handed to the farmers at the gram sabha.

A lot of work went by the institute and farmers into the soil health card scheme before the generation of the card. At first, the agriculture department provided training on collection of samples. Subsequently, teachers, students and farmers were registered on the soil health portal.

Soil testing kits were received and training was given to teachers and students for collection of 50 soil samples. Soil samples were collected by the students under the guidance of the teachers from the fields.

Soil testing was done on 12 parameters— pH, EC, organic carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, copper, zinc, iron, manganese, sulphur and boron. Soil health cards were generated using soil health card mobile app and portal. After this, the gram sabha was conducted.

After receiving the cards, the farmers remarked that this would improve their productivity and sustainability by providing detailed insights into soil health.

Besides principal Bidhan Chandra Singh, Dr Udharwar Sanjay Kumar from ICAR, Diona Korgaoankar and Ksihor Kashinath Kuttikar from village panchayat of Curca-Bambolim were also present for the gram sabha.

Soil health card is a scheme launched by govt of India in 2015 under which govt issues soil cards to farmers that will carry crop-wise recommendations of nutrients and fertilisers required for the individual farms to help farmers to improve productivity through judicious use of inputs.

The project was accomplished under chemistry faculty Yazhisai Selvi, who stated that the interactive sessions of the farmers, students, local representatives and scientists would be a continuous and ongoing exercise to forge a synchronous community interaction forum.