Mobile Advisory Helps Jajpur Farmer Get Rich Harvest

Jajpur: When everything is getting hi-tech, why not farming? In these days of unpredictable climate change, precise information on weather conditions and solution of pest attack can go a long way in helping farmers avoid losses.

Naba Kishor Sahoo (66) of Gopalpur village under Dharmasala block in Jajpur district is a farmer. His only source of income is farming. After his father’s death, he took the whole responsibility of farming.

Sahoo has four acres of land. He was cultivating paddy in Kharif, but due to water shortage, there was no Rabi crop.

He produces Swarna, Basumati, Kalajeera, Kalachampa and Sampad rice. He uses cow dung and cow urine in the field. He mixes the urine with pond weeds and dry paddy straw to prepare a bio-fertilizer.

He used to prepare bio-medicines from a juice, which is prepared by boiling neem leaf and seed. He also uses neem seed as pesticide and medicine.

To save his paddy from BPH/WBPH, he uses kerosene and sand with a special formula as pesticides.

He is trained in OUAT on paddy cultivation. He has also attended many block-level workshop and has shared his experience as an organic farmer on many stages. He is also an ATMA (2016), New Innovation Award 2018 awardee by Adarsa Krushaka by Samaj in 2019.

“I know the Reliance Foundation from 2015. I use its toll free help line number 18004198800 for weather information and organic advisories,” said Sahoo.

He talks to expert of Reliance Foundation on paddy issues and has collected a lot of agricultural information from newspapers and journals.

Sahoo also loves to plant trees and prepares seeds and nurseries. He has distributed 80,000 seeds and 250 trees to the Forest Department and other departments till now.