Jagriti Yatra 2013 – Day 5
On 29th Dec, Jagriti Yatris reached the temple town of Melvaruvathur, visiting their next role model Mr. Madhavan. They met him in his farm.
If you haven’t understood already, Day 5 was dedicated to Indian Agriculture. Panelists of the day were Dr. GNS Reddy of Akshayakalpa Foundation, Mr. Ashutosh Sinha of Vilgro and Mr. Shashank of Farms n Farmers.
Akshayakalpa foundation is a farm that is a comprehensive integrated model developed to generate rural entrepreneurs by providing gainful employment opportunities to rural youth.
Farms and Farmers was started in 2010 by alumni of IIT Kharagpur and IIT Delhi having vast experience of Rural Development and Agriculture as well as Supply chain, Retail and FMCG. With the aim of providing end to end solutions (right from field to market) to farmers, the FnF team comprises of highly qualified and experienced personnel in the field of Soil Technology, Horticulture, Self-sustainable & Need-based farming and Organic Farming.
Viligro formerly known as Rural Innovations Network, is a nonprofit organisation that focuses on spotting, mentoring and incubating innovations that have maximum potential to change lives, in Rural India
Yatris visited Mr. Madhavan’s beautiful farm in Ulunthai village in Tamilnadu. Madhavan is an engineer turned farmer. He expressed his belief in enormous scope for making profit in the agriculture sector if it was done scientifically adapting to the changing world. R Madhavan believed agriculture should be taken as a normal job as is IT or anything else There were some common misconceptions related to agriculture, like farmers don’t go for soil test, flooding fields in the name of irrigation, choking roots with excess water, placing fertilizers at wrong places and so the produce is neither healthy nor in good quantity, which he addressed and emphasized how we can follow simple advices and get great returns.
Followed by his talk, Yatris had a well attended panel discussion on Agriculture.
As they will be entering their 6th day of this life changing journey, little do Yatris know about the drama which is going to unfold, which will take them from troughs of disappointments to crests of pleasant surprises!
Keep watching this space for more…
