PANAJI
The farmers who have successfully ventured into techniques like organic farming with integrated approach and innovative marketing strategy for sale of their products have begged the prestigious Krishi Ratna, Krishi Vibhushan, Krishi Bhushan award, Fr Inacio Almeida annual awards.
Chief Minister Pramod Sawant gave away these awards at the Goa Liberation Day ceremony on Sunday.
Vasudev alias Vandit Naik of Dharbandora Goa was awarded Krishi Ratna award, Anitha Mathew of Vallikkapan Assonora Bardez Goa was awarded Krishi Vibhushan award, Gautam Kamat, Agas Cola, Canacona was awarded Krishi Bhushan.
Deelip Pundalik Narulkar of Hassapur, Pernem, was awarded a special agriculture award -- the Fr Inacio Almeida Annual Award for organic farming.
Jayant Vishnu Rane of Pilerne, Bardez, Nahid Ahmed Shaikh of Vailowada, Sanquem and Chandrahas Krishna Dessai were awarded certificates of appreciation by the department.
Vasudev Naik who has been awarded the Krishi Ratna award along with wife Priyanka (both have degree in agriculture science) has been growing vegetables, coconut, areca nut, banana and also produces about 80 litres of milk per day.
They have a plant nursery and produce vermicompost, bio enriched manures besides maintaining apiary units. They made efforts towards organic farming using the farm biomass with zero budget farming.
Along with farming, they have developed a good network with other agribusiness stakeholders to sell their products with a modern marketing approach.
They are training farmers to solve their problems and also motivate them to get into agriculture.
They have done value addition to agriculture and dairy products by developing their own brand. They are set to add more horticultural plants and spice crops.
Anitha Mathew of Sal Bardez who bagged the Krishi Vibhushan award has cultivated vegetables, banana and pineapple in an organic way on a land of 1.8 hectares which she has taken on lease using a sprinkler system.
She has a piggery unit with 350 animals of local and exotic breeds. She also has a fish farm unit and innovatively produced seabass, tilapia, basa type fish.
She used urban waste scientifically through piggery, aquaponics, horticulture, compost etc produced through a biogas unit using the urban waste. She grows horticulture crops on a pond of water fortified with fish excreta.
Gautam Kamat a young farmer from Agas, Cola, Canacona who has been awarded Krishi Bhushan grows vegetables, paddy, coconut, arecanut and cashew. He aso cultivates turmeric. He has enriched his soil using home-prepared organic manure.
He is also into cashew juice extraction and processing work. He has grown crops using sprinkler system for irrigation.
He uses mechanical tools like weed cutter, cashew juice extraction machine to save labour cost.
Kamat has set up a 4000 sq mt polyhouse and for the last 4 years successfully cultivated orchids.
Deelip Narulkar of Pernem who has been awarded Fr Inacio Almeida Organic Farming award has taken an integrated farming approach with farming of horticultural crops, spices, cereal crops and vegetables.
He has dairy units with 11 animals of which 5 milch animals are of Gir breed and supplies about 40 litres of milk daily with value added milk products.
Jayant Rane is 71 years old enthusiastic farmer who is practising agriculture as a hobby and uses integrated ways for growing paddy, vegetables, tuber crops besides crops like coconut, mango, areca nut, amla, banana, turmeric etc.
Nahid Sheikh from Sanguem along with coconuts, areca nuts and bananas is growing spices like black pepper, nutmeg as intercrop. He also runs a small poultry farm with 30 birds.
Chandrahas Desai of Quepem who is a graduate in agriculture sciences is produces yard manure at commercial level. He also supplies banana saplings, tulsi leaves, bale patra, haryali, local flowers during Hindu festivals.
