MENKENG MIRI, 10 Jul: The Namsai KrishiVigyan Kendra (KVK) conducted a participatory rural appraisal (PRA) in Menkeng Miri village on Wednesday.
The programme was conducted to assess the overall agricultural scenario of the village, in order to plan activities accordingly.
KVK plant protection scientist Dr MadhusmitaSonowal Bora, agricultural extension specialist Shravani Sahani, and agronomy expert K Nithinkumar facilitated the villagers in mapping out the village’s social map, resource map, gender disaggregated seasonal calendar, and seasonal analysis of major crops and livestock.
Village headman Jagannath Chungkrang, along with Parama Tao, Megam Mili and Kangkan Chungkrang provided details regarding the basic information of the village. A total of 60 participants, consisting of 10 males and 50 females, actively supported in conducting the PRA.
The appraisal helped the KVK understand the social constitution of the village, infrastructural facilities available for the villagers, the natural resources condition in their locality, major agronomic and horticultural crops grown, and livestock managed by the villagers.
Some of the problems identified were declining productivity of crops, not following soil fertilization, using of local varieties of seeds, and insect pest occurrence. The major crops grown in the village were paddy, followed by black gram and mustard.
The farmers also undertook vegetable cultivation in the area around their houses. During summers they grew pumpkin, while in winters potato and French bean were cultivated. Majority of the farmers had arecanut plantations, while a few villagers had banana trees and a few lemon orchards also.
In case of livestock, the farmers said that majority of them suffered losses due to disease related to deaths of animals. The major diseases identified were foot and mouth disease and lumpy skin disease in case of cattle, swine fever in case of pigs, and ranikhet in case of poultry.
While the uplands were utilized for cultivating second crop in rabi, as well as some fruit crops, the lowlands suffered from flooding during monsoon,making them unable to take up more than one crop per year.
The local varieties of crops grown by them and indigenous techniques followed to prevent insect pest were also noted down.
The KVK experts also discussed with the farmers practices followed by them for each crop, and suggested some correctional measures. Based on the needs identified during the analysis of farming situation of Menkeng Miri, the KVK has decided to conduct training and input distribution programmes in the future.
