| Details of Innovation |
The region the farmer belongs to receives an annual rainfall of less than 25-40 cm. He belongs to a joint family consisting of more than 35 members. All members take a keen interest in experimenting in agriculture and agroforestry. His uncle has kept a record of more than 35 parameters of weather and agricultural practices. The family collectively owns 17 hectares of land. After completing his education, he began farming on his small family farm, preceding 2 to 3 job offers in the early seventies. He has been experimenting with various dryland farming techniques for the last 15 years and has successfully developed a unique method of tree planting for dry regions. His endeavors brought two phenomena to his notice: viz. i) evapo-transpiration through weeds and ii) upward movement of water due to capillary action in soil, which are the major causes of water loss. If these losses are prevented, the soil can retain sufficient water even for a tree, even in dry regions. In 1982, he conducted a systematic experiment on different soil types to validate his observations. He measured the moisture content of soil from 10 different places at different depths in each plot. He found the following: (i) In all soil types, moisture to the depth of 30 cm. is lost due to evaporation, irrespective of soil management practices like weeding and plowing. (ii) Below 30 cm., the moisture content of weed-free and in plowed plots, it was almost twice that of the control plot.
Based on these findings, he designed a farming technique in drylands, i.e., leveling the field to prevent rainwater runoff, which is incomplete in contrast with the forest department and other institutions.
Two weeks after the first rain, plowing is carried out to remove weeds; it also helps break capillaries in the upper soil layer. This checks the upward capillary movement of water. The field is plowed again two weeks before the end of the rainy season. The seedlings selected for planting are kept in bags for three days, and care is taken to water them. They are then planted in 60-70 cm deep pits so that their root zone remains 30 cm. below the soil layer. After planting, approximately 1lt. of water is poured into the pit, and the plant is left to mature. He has successfully grown thousands of Eucalyptus, Ber (Zizyphus spp), Ardu (Ailanthus excelsa), Australian babul, Sisam (Dalbergia sisoo), Neem(Azadirachta indica), Amla, etc. through this technique. Trees planted by this method have survived one of the worst droughts in 1986-88. While explaining the logic of his technique, Sunda Ram says that plants that survive the stress in the first two weeks after planting will survive any kind of stress. He has successfully demonstrated this technique on a plot of land provided by the forest department about 3km away from his village. Many neighboring large farmers have adopted this method on their farms, while small farmers have adopted it on farm boundaries. He was the first person in his region to introduce the concept of agroforestry on non-irrigated lands in an arid region. He says there is no research on this aspect in scientific institutions. Based on this method, the Khejari (Prosopis cineraria) tree still exists in drylands and is used for fuel. The farmer was a pioneer in growing the fast-growing species, locally called Ardu, which is used as fuel. He plans to persuade pastoralists, who keep small ruminants on common land, to grow Ardu trees on their small non-irrigated rain-fed plots. |
Honey Bee Network Knowledge & Innovation Database (HBNKIND)
