Nowadays most of the schools in Goa have embarked on the journey of giving a practical exposure to their students about agriculture as a subject and adequate care to be taken for bringing up a plant. Even visits to farms near its vicinity are also being done by science teachers in particular as they understand the value of plants in our ecosystem.
This was possible when some technical officers of the Agriculture Department started giving a kit to the schools for experimenting the contents in it on their properties as well as in their available places around the student’s villages. The kit contained seeds, fertilizer, pesticide, insecticides and small tools which the teachers or management gladly accepted and put to good use for the knowledge of the students from their school. The students from 9th standard were tasked to identify suitable corner places in the school compound where they could take up this project or any other place where observations could be documented.
Once identified, the ground preparation was undertaken for various types of seed material made available to them. The project envisaged digging pits for plants made available to them through Homestead Garden scheme or seeds which were in the kit to be put to germination in poly bags raised by the students. Sufficient watch and ward was desirable so that the plants were put in the pits with good soil material mixed with manure or sown in the poly bags with said mixture.
Irrigation was the most vital point that the students understood by knowing how the soil holds water in the gaps of the particles which are fed to the roots of the young plants to absorb and through the process of photosynthesis prepare its food for better growth. The project was started in many talukas where the management were very keen and the students gave a thumbs up signal as they were close to nature while understanding the life cycle of a plant from close quarters.
The photos shared with the agriculture department showed the keenness of the school in giving practical know-how with the technical help from the zones of their talukas where our offices were located. The love for plants inculcating into the minds of young students was a positive sign for them to show their liking for agriculture as a whole and their mindset changed automatically by seeing is believing concept of the young plant sown or planted bearing fruits within a short span of time depending on the types of seeds sown.
Today, we see students indulging in fields on their own and helping their parents to till their soil or maintain the plantation on the hilly side which they used to shy away thinking it was not their type of work.
Getting close to nature is a lovely feeling once you understand life and the need for the environment to be protected. This experiment of changing the young minds' outlook has shown a keen interest in the younger generation to move towards agriculture and sustain their livelihood with organic farming. Parents on their side have also expressed happiness about this new avatar of their children who are now coming forward to give a helping hand in their daily routine life in the hinterland which is full of plantations along the river line and stream.
A lesson learnt from the experiment was that young minds can be moulded properly if the environment is suitable as well as congenial for them and they will carry it forward in their respective life in the near future.
(The writer is a retired deputy director at department of Agriculture who now handles translation division at ‘Kamat Securities’ and is consultant at Agri-horti Consultancy Services)
