Sunday, September 12, 2010

Farming visits - an observation

Recently have been visiting Sahaja Samruddha an organization working on safeguarding the genetic diversity as well as a friend who is doing farming apart from his regular IT job. My good friend CM has blogged about both of this saving me the effort!
There was one interesting observation which I thought I should mention here.
On the farm visit whenever we happened to encounter the other farmers our IT farmer would exchange pleasantries and generally enquire about them, how their farming was coming along etc. He would specifically ask about the usage of chemical fertilizers and knowing his views they would go on the defensive rarely admitting to any such usage! The term they used for fertilizer was what picked my interest. They referred it to as "mevu" which is literally fodder in Kannada instead of "gobbara" which is fertilizer. Perhaps it is a reflection of the transition which has occured over a period of time in the usage of fertilzer from being an external additive to an essential part of farming!