Name - Devadanam

Date-23/03/09

Title- Agriculture
Introduction

Agriculture is one of the main source to develop our country economic

growth. India is having 140 million hector cultivated land, second largest rice
and wheat producer and largest milk producer and world leader in dairy
animal producer.

Topic taught

Agriculture vis-à-vis Rural Livelihood, technology development, rural

scenario, challenges in rural livelihood, evolution of agriculture, climate
change.

Module description

Srikanth started with agriculture vis-à-vis livelihood, he explained that

in earlier days the farmers used to follow the organic agriculture system, but
nowadays due to the lack of fertility and uncertain production farmers are
following new systems in the agriculture such as pesticides, fertilizers,
weedicides manure etc. In this system technology plays a vital role in the
farmer’s life, they use tractors to plough their fields. Farmers use chemical
input like fertilizers pesticides and weedicides and they can grow high
yielding varieties of hybrid vegetables and fruits and Farmers also use
hydroponics system to grow plants.

The presenter showed a video that focused on the effects of pesticides on

children. The government has banned some pesticides even still farmer’s use
harmful pesticides which have caused their children to contract various
diseases. The children in this village are suffering from skin diseases and
some cannot walk.

S L Desai taught the evolution of agriculture, He explained agriculture before

Greenhouse Revolution and after the Greenhouse Revolution, manure,
biogas, and mixed cropping system. Conventional agriculture (after
greenhouse effect) in these I learnt how to make use of green revolution
technologies, surplus market outside, monocropping based system.

The last session was on Climate change, energy and livelihood. The impact of
climate change is greatest in Asia because 60% of the world population lives
in Asia. The main culpritscausing climate change are 1) Energy (fossils fuels,
because of fossils fuels many industries started and this industries are
causing climate change) 2) Transportation (vehicles leave lot of carbon in the
air and this carbon leads to climate change 3) Buildings ( people are cutting
trees to construct buildings). He has ended the session by quoting the
sentence, We have not inherited the earth from our forefather, we have
borrowed it from our children.

In the afternoon the group had a field visit to kuridikeri village. In Innam
Veerapur we learnt about how the farmers use local resources. In kuridikeri
we went into the fields and learnt how the planst are affected by the pests,
what steps we should take to prevent them, farmers explained us in detail.

Key points

1. Natural resource management.

2. Technology development.
3. Climate change.
4. Evolution of agriculture.

Learning’s

I learnt how to make use of natural resource, rural economy and industrial
economy, climate change, how technology is contributing to agriculture.