WET IC brings cheer to farmers and a fillip to growing guava in Maharashtra

“If agriculture goes wrong, nothing else will have a chance to go right in the country,” said Prof. M. S. Swaminathan very relevantly, for farming is a diamond sector for the Indian economy that requires constant nurturing with the introduction of new technologies and methods to shine and flourish. A small initiative in this endeavour was taken by the projects under the Pune Cluster of WET IC to support needy farmers by providing horticulture ‘guava’ samplings
free of cost in 2021.

Making the initiative sustainable

The first step was to identify ‘needy’ farmers with the help of several NGOs from Maharashtra, chosen purely based on the agricultural land they owned, with those having less than five acres given priority. Drip irrigation systems were installed at these farms to ensure the survivability of the guava saplings. Frequent visits by various project teams tracked the growth of the saplings, and survival audits were shared with the farmers, which helped sustain the initiative.

Why Maharashtra?

Maharashtra was an obvious choice for it is one of India’s highest guavaproducing states and guava farming is extremely lucrative. The choice was also driven by reports from the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare that the output of food grains from horticulture in the country had increased in 2020–21 to 303.34 million tonnes compared to 297.50 million in 2019–20. As one of the project leaders remarked, “apart from aiding horticulture, through our initiative we were helping to increase the green belt in the country, which is a target set by our top management.”