Project advances

Unfortunately I did not get around to writing an update on my project advances any earlier than now. And so my time at bioRe just came to an end and I will leave this wonderful place tomorrow! It's the moment of farewells and almost heartbreaking last words and wishes. 

The exchange with the farmers was surely one of the most precious things I experienced here. These two farmers are very committed and doing organic farming with all their heart and soul! They are both PTD farmers, taking part in the research activities of bioRe and currently also have trials on their fields on different cotton varieties or on manure application(rock phosphate). During the last weeks I also had a lot of other tasks to fulfill. I had to coordinate the data collection for the trials on different spraying intervals and the efficiency of botanicals. 

During the last month I went to many villages and met many bioRe farmers in order to get to know about their current spraying practice, about possible ways to improve it and identify which strategy they would be willing to adopt. Most of the organic farmers use very few inputs and even apply organic (botanical) pesticides only cautiously. However, a great number of pests occur on cotton and as their yields are anyhow already rather low, the cotton crop needs great attention and good protection against the pests. As farmers usually spray too late to prevent yield reductions by pests, it seems to be most promising if they could adopt an easy and practicable pest monitoring strategy by which they could observe what kind of pests are present and how high pest pressure is. The interviews with a great number of farmers should reveal how they themselves evaluate their situation and wether and how they could imagine to integrate the use of monitoring techniques into their pest management practices. The interviews with the farmers were all completed two weeks ago. 

The next step was to gather the extension officers in order to ask them about the feasibility to adopt pest monitoring techniques and the different possible options. This was done through a long and fruitful workshop for which I did agian a lot of literature research to improve it. The gathering of the results still needs to be done. I now have a lot of material, got many inputs and still have a heap of literature to put together and into a good shape in order to create a useful output!

For all these interviews and workshops I greatly relied on Lokendra, who translated all written (the questionnaries) and spoken (the answers, the presentations etc.) information! He did a temendously good job! And he exhibited a lot of patience (compared to myself). Yet, these translations were at the same time also the biggest challenge in this work. Even though I knew and I was sure that Lokendra explained everything very well, it was hard for me at times to let go. I sometimes feared that the farmers will not understand things the way I meant it. In Hindi/Nimari the way of saying things is so very different and a lot of idioms are used to explain. I therefore sometimes thought, that the farmers are losing track of what I really wanted to ask. Or that Lokendra influences them too much in their opinion by suggesting solutions or emphasizing what he himself thought was important.

But we managed well and achieved a lot within a short time, thanks to the unbelievable organisational skills of my Indian fellows! Always remember the following: "In India everything is possible" ;) Oh yes, it is!

We went for the last time to see the two farmers which have the trials on different spraying intervals in their fields. There, we again collected data and I got a feedback from both farmers on their experiences with these trials.

For my debriefing meeting we then invited many PTD farmers involved in the research activities of bioRe in one or the other way and I presented the preliminary results of the trials.

Another thing which required quite some time were the Leaflets. Claudia Utz compiled 10 leaflets on Self Made Products such as botanical pesticides, seed treatment methods and so on. These needed to be translated into Hindi and it was a challenging task to do for Lokendra. I more or less only took care of the layout work and compatibility problems. 

We demonstrated the finalized leaflets to the extension officers and the farmers and got their feedback and suggestions for improvement. They appreciated this work a lot and showed much gratitude. I hope, too, that the leaflets will be of great help to the farmers! 

If I was here for one more year I would very much focus on the training of the farmers. I don't believe that I am the right person to teach them anything, but I could identify that there is a great potential in the transfer of knowledge. As I emphasized on pest monitoring options and tools I would love to really teach farmers about the pests in the first place and then about how they could be monitored and managed. I would like to experience myself for an entire cotton season (May- Feb) which pests occure at which time, and how they could be monitored and controlled. Most importantly I identified that there is a great potential to increase yield and fibre quality by a late season pest control program. None of the farmers spray between September and February (of up to May) but there are numerous insects feeding on and damaging the cotton bolls and fibre. A lot of work could also be done to find out about economic threshold levels for the organic production. Or one could push the use of biocontrol products such as parasitic fungi which are available on the market against several pests. 

It is sure that there are still plenty of topics for future students to address.