Psychology training to farmers

Training Psychology to farmers






Training in field and collection of data

10 principles of suicide prevention

Suicide among experienced farmers is a great loss today. Based on my researches and field experiences, I like to share some principles of preventing suicide among the farmers.

1. Develop competency in reading, writing and arithmetic

Basic knowledge about above 3 will help you to develop competency to overcome current challenges in societal transformation. People around you can misdirect from agriculture or land cultivation.

2. Do not be blind followers

Patient hearing to lessons provided by the trainers, dealers and neighbourers is important. But do not be blind followers. Always think that you have long years of experiences developed out of your experimenting mind.

3. Be good experimenter

Make small plot of land for your experiment. Do not spread fertilizers or pesticides over whole plot. Do experiment and then use it. Your experiment will prevent you from blind administration of pesticides. Remember that all insects are not dangerous for the plant. Some insects help the plants to grow, some insects can kill bad insects. Plant grows out of bio-diversity.



4. Routine accounting

Maintain one ledger book and write each amount of income, expenditure and excess expenditure.

5. Use medicinal plants

Medicinal plants within intervals of plants can stop your excess expenditure for pesticides. This will stop damage in bio diversity. Allow more air and light for growing plants. Air can control bad gases coming out from soil.

6. Change your value

You always think of profit. No, profit is not your value. Always think of social responsibility as your value. You are ploughing lands not for individual profit but for providing daily foods to larger society.

7. Develop social networking

Do not keep yourself within your walls during depression. Engage yourself social networking. Form social network among farmers in your village.

8. Motivate others to plantation

People around you may not like plantation. Motivate them towards plantation. Do not pay attention to the words that farming has no profit. It is a loss.

9. Education through gardening

Encourage garden based education in your place. Teach your kids through gardening, or plantation.

10.Control bad cues

Always control the cues that can demotivate you from agriculture.

Mixed feeling

For the sudden demise of Ex-chief minister, Late Jyoti Basu, I canceled my visit to Bagjola on 18th January. Getting appointment and organizing the farmers are very hectic process. Shri Gain took all the troubles. He told me that farmers will take procession tomorrow to show their grief.

Hingalganj experience

Recently, I went to Hingalganj near Sundarban and Bangladesh. I met 53 farmers and noticed their failures in following five areas:

1. Inability to create customer;
2. Unorganized crop production;
3. Lack of diary writing ;
4. Lack of knowledge about risk analysis and financial management;
5. Lack of knowledge about project analysis and goal setting.

Their educational level ranged from class VII to B.A.

My visit was arranged by Shri Nilangshu Gain of Swanirbhar.
Ardhendu Bhattacharya was with me.

comment from orkut friend

Some of the problems faced by small farmer are;

Lack of knowledge: Lack of knowledge about modern farming techniques, Lack of knowledge about abt various govt measures, availability of farm loans and knowledge about use of pesticides are common among farmers. They are many farmers ( I guess more than 60-70%) who never approached agriculture department. Many of them are not even aware of existence of such institution.

Lack of better price: Most of the farmers do not get good prices for their produces. There is involvement of many intermediaries in between which result in less prices for the agri produces of a farmer. There are many farmers who are not even aware of APMC. People approach local dealer and sell their produce at the price quoted by the dealer. Since small farmers cannot afford to transport their products to mandis, they don't get a good deal.

Cost of farming : The cost of farming has increased substantially over the years. It is quite natural that the workers demand higher wages as they get similar salary outside. However we didn't see such a similar rise in the income of farmers. Earlier small farmers used to do most of their farm work with the help of family members. Since we don't have many joint families, the labor cost in farming has increased substantially.

Non availability of Labor: Non availability of Labor is one of the problem now and going forward it will be one of the biggest challenge for the farmer. People's attitude towards farming, the hard work involved in farming and other lucrative opportunities available are some of the reasons for that.

Dependence on single crop: Most of the farmers are small scale farmers and they rely on single farming and in case diseases or fall in prices incur huge losses.

I think multi tasking is one of the best way to become a successful farmer. Rather than depending on a single crop farmer should try multi produts. NGOs should come forward and help farmers in logistic issues and NGOs must try to educate famers..

Value change

Farming is basically based on collectivistic values. Farmers are interacting with each other. They maintain a good social network system through which they learn different procedures of farming, and develop market.

This is noted that farmers are moving from collectivistic values to individualistic values possibly due to market competition as is noted in urban based industries.

Baduria visit and new experience

Yesterday (3rd Nov.2009), I met almost 30 farmers engaged in sustainable agriculture procedure. Debalina Chatterjee and me went there with the help of Shri Neelangshu Gain. Shri Gain is running one NGO named
'Swanirbhar'. The NGO aims at spreading education about sustainable agriculture system among rural poor farmers. Through the Secretary of DRCSC, Shri Anshuman Das, I get opportunity to interact with Shri Gain.
Shri Gain is versatile person having vast knowledge about sustainable agriculture. In SA, focus is on engineering education about organic instead of chemical fertilizers and germinated seed transplantation. He told us about diversified education and affiliation ranging from software engineering to agricultural education to health sciences. He did some researches on mangroves of Sundarban, AILA etc. His research method usually follows evidence based model rather empirical statistical data analysis.

We collected data from a training center managed by Swanirbhar. Shri Gain was with us despite his active involvement in different areas. The place from where we collected data is 10/15 Kms away from Baduria.

There I have learned that successful plantation requires biodiversity. Farmers who engineer biodiversity are effective in the followings:
1. Multi farming
2. Land utiliization
3. Leadership development in marketing
4. Innovation

These farmers are not anxious at all for availability of fertilizers, pesticides and weedicides. All the three are under their control.
Another advantage is killing bad insects and rearing good insects.
They are using vermicompost system with knowledge getting from local training centers managed by NGOs.

On the other hand non biodiversified plantation farmers are using pesticides and others in considering their own assumptions. If they get poor result, they are asking for advice from the local fertilizer shops. These local fertilizer shops are also not well educated.


Mr. Gain assisted us to visit one successful farmer. Below is his life style:


Here is a farmer, commerce graduate, 60 years old, has one small plot of land (4 bighas) and one small pond. He himself is farming land using traditional instruments - 'kurul', 'kaste' etc. He constructed some 'macha' around the pond and cultivated vegetables. Pond is used for fishing. Many crabs are making their shelters around the pond. So his earning comes from the crab also.
He has some hens they are using for making the land more fertile. Their excreta help to make more insects. Insects are taking shelters in the land. This makes the land fertile. Besides, the farmer prepares own vermicompost. He is using organic fertilizers in the land and selling them to local farmers.
He cultivates land for 3 times rice crop production. He has some mango trees. Beneath the trees, I have seen some vegetable plants. He is not using any pesticide or weedicide. Rather, he is telling about plantation of some medicinal plants in such a way so that insects are misguided. He is earning through medicinal plants also.
He told me his own shop in the market. Buyers who can afford more buy from his shop.


Baduria
Baduria is a city as well as a municipality located in the North 24 Parganas district in the state of West Bengal in India. It is a part of the Basirhat subdivision and also has a police station. The administrative hub of the North 24 Parganas district is Barasat. The district is located between latitudes 23°15` North and 22°11` North and longitudes 89°5` East and 88°20` East. The district is a part of the Ganges- Brahmaputra delta. The river Ganges flows parallel to the entire west border of the district. There are numerous over rivers. Ichhamati, Jamuna, and Bidyadhari are a few to name. The soil type of this region ranges from sandy to clayey loam. This district experiences tropical climate similar to the remaining part of the Gangetic West Bengal. The characteristic feature of the climate is the Monsoon, which lasts from early June to mid September. The weather conditions range from dry during the winter (mid November to mid February) to humid during the summer. The annual rainfall is normally about 1,579 mm. The people of the North 24 Parganas district are primarily farming or service people. Important towns of this district include Barrackpore, Barasat, Habra, Bongaon, Gobardanga, Duttapukur, Naihati, Madhyamgram, Sodepur, Jagulia, Belgharia, Basirhat and Khardaha.

The town of Baduria in this district is located at 22.74° North and 88.79° East. This town is situated 8 meters (26 feet) above sea level. In accordance with the 2001 India census Baduria has a population of 47,418. Males and females respectively comprise 51% and 49% of the population. The standard literacy rate of this town is 67%, higher than the national average of 59.5%. 55% of the male population and 45% of the female population are literate. 13% of the population is less than 6 years of age.
Ref: http://www.indianetzone.com/6/baduria.htm