Good Agricultural Practices
- Home
- Projects
- Good Agricultural Practices
The Problems
Punjab has gone through some tough times with “Green Revolution” agriculture, with high levels of the use of water, chemical herbicides and pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and decreasing soil fertility. At the same time, farmers have been left with little support in terms of extension work that would help them transition to better practices.
Story
Updates
Photos
Videos
Story
Pagri Gurdaspur Project Visit and Action Items for Dasvandh and Website
Gurbinder Bajwa continues his activities for extension work and to address the overall issues of transition to better agricultural practices. He recently organized a big meeting on May 1, 2023 of principal actors in Punjab on the issue of the use of canal waters. We will report on that. Our secretary Harinder Lamba visited Gurdaspur March 4-5, 2023 and was hosted by Gurbinder Bajwa. Here are the action items and description of the visit. Gurdaspur – Gurbinder Bajwa and FPO – Action Items 1. Gurbinder to continue extension activity for Good Agricultural Practices with some details to be provided such as farmers names and locations. Gurbinder posts his farm visits very often on Facebook, but we need an added way of tracking farmers by name and farm size and dates helped to tracK progress, so we have good stories to tell. Also need regular brief reports, which can be posted on Dasvandh and on website – Weekly, monthly and quarterly. 2. Food processing: To help new FPO called “Batala Foods” that is being registered under leadership of Palwinder Ghuman (currently operating milk collection center for Verka, and Machinery Bank for larger implements). FPO should have completed registration by now and will cover five categories: Milk and milk product processing and chilling, Jaggery (gur), mustard oil impellers, grinding of organic wheat and maize (only), and shelling of basmati from husk. This activity has full support of Gurbinder Bajwa. 3. Honey Processing: Forty bee keeping farmers near Faridkot need help with Honey processing (they are struggling and really need help). Gurbinder Bajwa feels that Gurdaspur honey processing should be linked up with Faridkot bee keepers. Also, Bhattiji is close friends with a technical Honey Processing expert who could help define what is needed. This can be added as a sixth category to the five for Item 2, but Bajwa thinks we may be better off linking up with Honey Processors in Gurdaspur district. 4. Fruit processing: There is a super expert on fruit processing (Harman Singh) that I met on my first evening at Gurdaspur with Gurbinder. He is an expert on preparing nursery plants for fruit trees (He can help Himachal in a big way, but Punjab needs to engage him). Gurbinder to help make this connection and support this effort if person is willing (forgetting his full name – Gurbinder to provide and connect us with him). Gurbinder said he will define a proposal for items 2 and 3 (if added) and budget on what help we can provide in initial stages for small empowerment of new FPO.SO WHAT IS PAGRI DOING?
That is why PAGRI is transitioning this project to one that provides “Extension for good agricultural practices, environmentally friendly practices, lower cost cultivation and residual free crops”. For this we have been fortunate to find a very capable, experienced, motivated, sincere and active person in Gurbinder Singh Bajwa, who was already doing such activities, but now Pagri is supporting him to do better and, as good results are seen, expand the project.
OUR OVERLL APPROACH FOR THIS PROJECT
Gurbinderji will be educating and demonstrating to farmers the basics of better agricultural practices by personal onsite visits to farmers within easy travel distances to his base in Gurdaspur district – sowing, care and harvesting. Although the current planting season has passed, next year this will include the direct seeding of rice (DSR) without the water flooding technique. For the remainder of this year, it will be directed at wheat, sugar cane and other crops. He will be teaching farmers how to use different pesticides and herbicides (made on the farm) instead of the poisonous chemicals. He is very practical and his advice is good for farmers that want to transition away from damaging agricultural practices.
SOME MORE SPECIFICS
He will be teaching farmers the use of machines specially designed for small farmers. Also, how to not burn the stubble after harvest and use it for mulch. The techniques he teaches will be reduce the costs to farmers (as the use of expensive chemicals and machines will be reduced) and reduce the use of water – a major issue for Punjab. High cost of inputs for green revolution agriculture is a major cause of farmer suicides. The harvested crops will be free of poisonous chemical residues, which will promote the health of consumers and improve water quality of water table. He will provide guidance to Pagri on how to organize food processing activities for the farmers he helps.
WHAT WE HAVE POSTED
Also see the photos of him that we have posted. Watching the short YouTube video sent to us from Gurbinderji will give you an overall familiarity with what he is doing with the support of PAGRI. We hope that you will support this PAGRI project and very worthwhile activities of the project led by Gurbinder Bajwa by donating generously!!
Also see his frequent and good postings on FaceBook where he is very active:
https://www.facebook.com/bajwagurbinder
September 12, 2022
Updates
Cool Timeline
2023
Photos
Videos
