It146;s about besting pests

These cotton farmers in Vidarbha cut down on insecticides, keep debt crisis away

Kishore Wakde of Raifuli village is an odd man out in this suicide-affected district of Vidarbha8217;s cotton belt. He is a happy farmer. Ask him the secret of his happiness. 8220;It8217;s due to aram,8221; he says. He actually means IRM Integrated Resistance Management, but the native expression delivers the right meaning. 8220;This year, I didn8217;t use insecticides and saved nearly Rs 9,000,8221; says Wakde, showing off the healthy cotton crop in his 13-acre farm. 8220;Despite excessive rains this year, I am still hoping to get at least 5 quintals per acre.8221;

Rambhau Kakpure and Suryabhan Muzbaile from Karanji Kanji, and Ritesh Mangekar from Sirasgaon have a similar story to tell. Over 2,000 farmers from 68 villages in the district have come out of the insecticide trap, one of the major reasons for the spree of suicides in the cotton belt.

Across the country, over 95,000 farmers from 1,010 villages are now benefiting from the IRM technique in terms of drastic reduction in their expenditure and better crop protection. It is also helping in recreation of the right eco-system around the cotton crop. Leading the effort in Wardha and Yavatmal is Atul Sharma, project officer of Community Polytechnic, a Gandhian institution. Sharma has been spreading the IRM message to scores of villages in the district. A technological response developed after 10 years of research by the Central Institute for Cotton Research CICR here to the devastation caused by indiscriminate use of insecticides, IRM is an eco-friendly way of pest control by encouraging natural enemies of cotton pests to proliferate. It prescribes least use of select insecticides and on the right time.

Since 1997, when IRM was first started at village Rohana in Nagpur district, CICR has been playing a pivotal role in extending the concept to over 28 cotton-producing districts in the country by training field workers from villages and holding farmers8217; congregations.

8220;About 55 pc of the total insecticide used in the country has been on cotton and is grown only on 5 per cent of the total cultivable area. Farmers spent on an average 50 per cent of their total budget on pesticides. In Wardha, it goes up to 80 per cent,8221; says Dr Keshav Kranthi, CICR Deputy Director and a decorated scientist credited with development of fake Bt detection kit and resistance detection kits for farmers. 8220;Over the years, early application of pesticides from organophosphate category destroyed the naturally-occurring biological control beyond redemption. That has seen the unchallenged reign of monsters like cotton bollworm. Allowing the natural enemies to survive and multiply by avoiding the use of insecticides and judiciously using the right pesticides to control the pests harmful to cotton is what the IRM is all about,8221; he says.

Integrated Pest Management was the name of the game before IRM was brought to the fore. Under it, biological agents were developed in lab and were given to farmers for pest control. 8220;It prescribed initial application of organophosphate insecticides, followed by application of biological agents like neem extract, trichogramma and Bt spray. IPM was successfully demonstrated for about a decade, but proved unsustainable due to sparse availability and inconsistent performance of the bio-agents. Harmful cotton pests had developed resistance to pesticides. All this led to the need for a new thinking and eventually led to development of IRM,8221; says Kranthi. And the IRM results are wonderful in Wardha. Farmers now can identify both harmful cotton pests and their natural enemies. 8220;Earlier, we used to spray insecticides as soon as we saw any type of pest. Now, we know which pest has to live and which to die,8221; says Gajanan Thakre of Kapsi village.

This year, many of them haven8217;t used insecticide at all. And everyone speaks of having saved at least Rs 1,000 per acre on insecticide count.