PALAKKAD: Even as the acreage under paddy cultivation is shrinking and farming turning less lucrative, the BEd students here decided to try their hand at transplanting saplings on Thursday. It was the kootayma of students and teachers of the BEd Centre at Koduvayur under Calicut University who devised the ‘Njangalum padathekku’ programme. Around 100-odd students as part of their social science subject have taken a 50-cent paddyfield (5 para field in local parlance) in Manimarkulambu in Koduvayur on lease to cultivate paddy.“We have planted the SAT variety of paddy seed for the second crop and everyone needs to undertake some form of farming activity in life since it is a part of our culture,” Remya N S Kumar, one of the students, said.She added that the remaining paddyfields in our state need to be protected if Kerala was to be self-sufficient in food grains.A monitoring committee of students have been constituted to see that the paddy gets necessary water, manuring and timely deweeding is done to see that it grows properly till harvest, Dinesh Baby, the social science lecturer of the college, said. Dinesh said that in the academic curriculum of BEd there is the lesson “Socially useful productive work” (SUPW). Usually the students undertake activities like candle-making and finish the lesson. But this time, we decided to do something really useful to society.“Senior farmer Ramankutty was always willing to lease out his paddyfield free of cost. He is the advisor from seed selection to harvesting since it was a four-month process. Half of the field is planned to be cultivated using chemical fertilisers and half of the field using bio-manure to make a comparative study,” Dinesh Baby said. The students were led by a senior farmer Ramankutty and teachers who trained the students E P Dalika, A Ramesh Kumar, P Pamila, S Sudha and Sunitha Krishnan.
Comments
0 comment