Name : Khirod Mahanta
Name of the farmers club : Ramdev Farmers club
village – Madhapur
Grampanchayat : Badapatna
Block – Swam patna.
Khirod Kumar Mahanta is a resident of Madhapur village, 38km away from the district headquarters at Keonjhar. He lives with his wife, two sons and daughter. Khirod has a limited land of his own. He grows paddy in that piece of land i.e. only during rainy season. If the nature is merciful and there is no disaster, the yield he gets support the food requirement of his family for only two months. For the rest period of the year, he has to depend on wage labor as he has no alternate means of livelihood.
Then he became one of the members of Farmer’s club sponsored by PECUC named Ramdev Farmers club. He participated in farmers training organized by PECUC for adopting SRI method in the field and was impressed to make an experiment by himself. He also motivates other farmers to attend the meeting. The success was encouraging not only for Khirod, but also for other farmers of the village.
Khirod was introduced to system of rice intensification (SRI) in one acre of land. The seed provided by PECUC and by applying organic manures, he could harvest almost double amount of paddy in SRI practices that is the annual yield is 19 quintal. Since then he has continued adoption of SRI principles in paddy.
Khirod has observed that in case of transplanting in modern method there is needed to wait for rainfall, but in intensification method, one can transplant if there is moisture in the soil. In the context of irregular monsoon cycles and rainfall pattern, Khirod finds that Paddy intensification is more preferable than the earlier one. Now one of his sons helps him in agricultural activities. The younger son and daughter are studying in high school. He is now able to feed his family all over the year. After paddy cultivation he is planning to do vegetables in the field.
“Thanks a lot that during my difficult days PECUC showed me the light in which I could able to maintain my family so well”.