The Chennai Agriculture Department has created a record by producing more than 10 tonnes of paddy per hectare in select pockets in the State by adopting the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) technique. The average productivity in the State is 4 to 5 tonnes per hectare. The maximum yield was achieved by a farmer in Tiruvannamalai district, who had harvested 14.27 tonnes per hectare and by another farmer in Kallakurichi in Villupuram district whose per hectare yield was 13.38 tonnes.

I was happy to notice, at least some universities are actually progressed on the practical front, rather than disillusioning students with theoretical-memory-intensive-exhaustive-exam

s.

This, according to department officials … claimed that it was a phenomenal record as the average productivity was less than 3 tonnes in the country…Continuous monitoring by the officials and agriculture scientists of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) and the cooperation of the farmers resulted in the high yield …technique had proved to enhance rice productivity by 30 to 40 %per cent with comparatively less water, the is taking steps to popularize it for large-scale adoption.

Well, I was searching through sites and other places for the theory of this efficient technique when I landed here. One can find wealth of resources here. One of being the presentation down below. I’ve just uploaded the pdf version as is, so that people can view the presentation right away. Its a very enlightening presentation, gives a very good view point of what SRI is, and focus on statistics and yield improvement following the practice.

The SRI technique requires considerably less amount of following than that would have taken in the conventional methods -

• Seeds,
• Fertilizers,
• Labour,
• Water
• Nursery area.

On an average, a farmer could save at least Rs.1,600 per hectare by adopting the technique, the officials said.

Sources:

• The Hindu (Google) <|> HinduOnNet (Google)
• System of Rice Intensification <|> SRI, India Specific
• SRI India

I find The Hindu only one country newspaper which is keeping a track of all the developments in Indian agriculture at least SRI very-very closely. Just final closing words, I went to the Department of Agriculture, Andhra Pradesh Website and took some stats from there -

• Achievement of Action Plan 2007-08
  • Organized 3,557 demonstrations on SRI @ 100 ha area per demonstration
• Action Plan 2008-09
  • Demonstration on 0.4 Ha of Land area, each costing Rs. 3000/- per demonstrations.
  • It is planned to organize 1680 demonstrations with an estimated cost of Rs. 50.40 lakhs during the eleventh plan period.

I also went to the Tamil Nadu’s State Agriculture Website, but didn’t find an English version (that’s one), the other being no published document called ‘action plan‘. The best of all, the State Agricultural departmental webiste is not even listed on the department wise list of state website.

I think all the government have short-comings here or there! Anyways, I’m tired of the websites being created by NIC. They are worst ever Govt. websites in the whole damn world. I’ve an article kept in the draft mode for quite long time focused on technical shortcoming HOLES in NIC run websites, I will soon publish it.

Namaskaar for now!

6,500 Consumers surveyed from 13 countries -

• Finland, Germany, Italy, Russia, Sweden, UK, United Arab Emirates, USA, Nigeria, India, China, Indonesia and Brazil

If each of the three billion people globally owning mobiles brought back just one unused device we could save 240,000 tonnes of raw materials and reduce greenhouse gases to the same effect as taking 4 million cars off the road. By working together, small individual actions could add up to make a big difference.

– Markus Terho, Director of Environmental Affairs, Markets, at Nokia

% of People aware of Mobile phone recycling

One of the statics that highlighted the survey was awareness of people in India about recycling which scored lowest in the Global Ranking. The most interesting fact the survey brought out to the world was about what people do with their old handsets, highlights -

• Only 3% of the users globally recycled their handset,
• 4% of them were thrown
• (Majority) 44% of them were kept at home, coming to no use at all.
• While rest of the 16% of them being sold in emerging markets.

% of What people do with their handsets

Nokia in response to this, has launched Take-Back Campaigns in India. Nokia has been running such campaigns from late 1990′s in other parts of the world. Nokia has formed alliances with Environmental protection & preservation agencies like WWF & StEP. With the launch of Take-Back Campaigns in India, Nokia aims at improving awareness about recycling. Moreover Nokia in a statement mentioned -

..company will be planting a tree for every handset dropped into these recycling bins and giving out a surprise gift as well,

Well, I think it would be really interesting to watch Nokia plant trees, but the scenario I’m looking into is Where? and planting is good ..but the question who is going to maintain it? Well, I personally have affinity for the organizations that are into social development and humanizing things rather than monetizing every damn thing! I love the concept Nokia has come up, and I believe it to be the first co. marketing the human effort.

Nokia’s Take-Back Campaign is NOT LIMITED to Nokia handsets only, its available to all the mobile phones. So if you have a mobile phone kept in your junk yard or drawer, please.. please take it out go to your nearest Nokia Care Center and give it for recycle.

CONTRiBUTE TO ENViRONMENT