Quite a large extent of land -about 65 acres is under cultivation.
The Centre believes in growing diverse crops to reduce adverse
impact of monoculture. The Centre grows food and vegetable
crops, and also fodder for the cattle. It has fruit trees
too.
The food crops that are grown include paddy, wheat, jowar,
and bajra. Several pulses such as red gram, urrd, green gram,
etc are cultivated as a multi-cropping strategy. sudan, baraseem,
maize, jowar fodder crops grown on farm provide required green
fodder to our cattle. Potato, okra, tomato, chilli, suran,
are some of the vegetables grown on the farm. Adding to all
these, some fruit trees have been planted Papaya, banana,
mango, bael, amda, tad palm and jackfruit. Oil seeds such
as mustard, line seeds, ground nut, till are a part of farming
at the Centre. The Centre during the last year (2006-07) produced
100 qt.of wheat, 125 qtl. of paddy, 50 qtl. of suran, 20 qtl.
of vegetables, 250 qtl. of potato and 30 qtl of papaya.
The Centre has adopted both modern techniques and traditional
practices in agriculture. Although Centre is fully aware of
the importance of growing food organically, it is still using
chemical fertilizers and pesticides to maintain certainly
level of food production. The Centre is exploring the eco-friendly
practices to replace chemicals step by step. The Centre is
also drawing plans for phasing out chemical farming gradually
and completely in the next 5 years. In this endeavour it has
already made an humble beginning by growing paddy fodder and
fodder in 1.6 acre.
During this Rabi season, the centre has decided to cultivate
mainly wheat in 40 acres, barseem in 10 acres, potato and
mustard in 6 acres by using both chemical and bio-fertilizers
such as neem cakes. Peas and Mixed crops (jowar, bajra, etc)
will be grown organically in 9 acres. Due to marketing constraints
the Centre presently do not have any plans to grow medicinal
plants, although Jatropa, milk thristal, sarphaghandha, ashwagandha,
safed mushli, colious were cultivated during 2006-07.
It also has ventured into growing medicinal plants on a small
scale and discontinued due to marketing problems.
To meet its bio-fertilizer requirement for the organic farming
the Centre has vermicomposting units for composting cow dung
and farm yard manure .
Future Plans
The Centre wishes to work with the communities more intensely
to promote organic farming practices. It is planning to have
demonstration plots on a few food and vegetable crops during
2008-09. The Centre is looking forward for support from NGOs/Universities/Individuals.
The Centre is planning to allocate more area to cultivate
oil seeds and pulses.
The centre is conceiving the idea of having seed banks of
indigenous varieties of food and vegetable crops.
In order to promote the importance of eating fruit as a part
of regular diet, the Centre is considering developing a nursery
of fruit saplings from the year 2008-09. The saplings would
be sold to the neighbouring villages.
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