India, Assam - Jeremiya Narzary - 2019 Graduate
by Jeremiya Narzary
page developed by Clare Auld-Brokish, ARI Graduate Outreach remote Volunteer
submitted November 2021
Network e-Bulletin No. 10, March 2022
Promoting Healthy Food and Organic Practices
https://gyazo.com/682b5e5ff0d4a9334ad2df56c1e453c0
Jeremiya (right) teaching how to make IMO-3
My Dream: To empower a community where every family will have healthy food, enjoy good health, have enough income, have a decent place to live and care for each other.
Goal 1: To inform 64 communities about the dangers of chemicals used in farming and their ill effects on our health, soil, and environment by 2022
Goal 2: To educate 500 farmers on the Philosophy and Methods of Organic Farming and its benefits by 2022
Goal 3: To create awareness about Food Processing among 200 women and train them by 2022
Keeping my dream in mind to empower communities to have healthy food, enjoy good health, have enough income, have a decent place to live and to care for each other, I have shared my learning and knowledge (which I have learnt from Asian Rural Institute in Japan) with farmers, communities, and young people in different locations and among different groups. To achieve my dream and to meet my goals, I have taken action in the ways mentioned above. I have made good progress on my first two goals, but haven’t been able to start goal three yet. In the coming year, I hope that I can still accomplish it along with my other goals.
https://gyazo.com/d29b5d002b9f716464a4777de8039e0b
https://gyazo.com/dcb018f95dcf35c0ad0fae2cf7e97850
Jeremiya sharing his ARI learning and knowledge with farmers, community members, and young people. He conducted trainings for individual farmers as well as "reversed migrants," which are workers who lost their jobs and returned home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Goal 1: To inform 64 communities about the dangers of chemicals used in farming and their ill effects on our health, soil, and environment by 2022.
The people of my hometown and countryside community use excessive chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides in their tea gardens and in agriculture farms. Only a few village-side farmers don't use chemical products. One of my friends who is working as District Program Manager at the National Rural Health Mission informed me that due to excessive chemical use, the number of cancer patients in our hometown is very high. As I looked around, I saw in my hometown the need for great awareness on how much chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides are used in farming and how they become harmful to our health, soil, water and environment. After learning at ARI about the dangers of chemicals and benefits of organic farming, I became motivated to create awareness among our communities and to train farmers to make organic fertilisers using locally available resources which does not require spending money.
https://gyazo.com/07b6b645c01a5319e47151defee186c3
Introducing IMOs (Indigenous Microorganisms) for making fertilizer
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Getting up close to a jar of IMO 2!
An attempt has been made to hold awareness programs through chart paper presentations and PowerPoint Presentations about the dangers of chemicals used in farming and their ill effects to our health, soil and environment. When I travelled and shared this knowledge among the participants of our awareness programs, I saw their interest in organic farming. I haven’t seen any negative reactions so far because farmers want to go organic, but they don't have any idea how to make organic fertilisers. So, I shared with them how to use a variety of plentiful locally available resources like animal and bird manure, rice bran, kitchen garbage, straw, rice husk charcoal, IMOs, cow urine and brown sugar to make three types of organic fertilisers: compost fertiliser, bokashi, and liquid fertiliser. As a result, those who had been using chemicals minimized their use and those who never used will not do so in the future.
https://gyazo.com/6eee23d56c125d8ef96ee9a885833c64
Trainings included lessons on how to assemble local resources to make three types of organic fertiliser: compost fertiliser, bokashi, and liquid fertiliser. Here a pile of bokashi is being covered to boost the fermentation process.
Through these programs more than 400 people including farmers, community leaders, students, young people, Self Help Group members, government officials, government employees, NGO workers and political leaders were reached out to.
Goal 2: To educate 500 farmers on the Philosophy and Methods of Organic Farming and its benefits by 2022.
Conducting awareness and sensitization campaigns about the harmfulness of chemicals in farming and its negative effects to human health, soil, water and environment was successful. But this awareness campaign is not enough, and we decided that we must present alternative methods of farming like Natural and Organic Farming as well.
https://gyazo.com/2a91abd41162f551f1439fd6b7eac4b2
Demonstrating how to make rice husk charcoal.
Along with the awareness and sensitization programs, the participant trainees were taught a variety of techniques, such as:
Different methods of making organic fertilizers like waste compost, liquid fertilizers and bokashi
Mix cropping and crop rotation techniques
The advantages of diverse cropping and integrated farming
How to prepare organic pesticides
Livestock management techniques and the feed making process
How to use the available resources around them
Through these awareness and training programs they learned about the harmful effects of chemicals and the benefits of organic products as safe and healthy food.
The farmers who attended the trainings were generally individual small holder farmers from different locations and communities. One training brought together 30 individual community farmers for two full days to learn Integrated Organic Farming techniques which included lessons on Piggery and Poultry Farming. In addition, we held three special trainings for 36 Reversed Migrants in total who lost their jobs and had to return to their hometowns due to COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021.
https://gyazo.com/1532c5a0a240cb392e981a95cbb29c77
Pumpkin cultivation as part of a special hands-on training program for reversed migrants. This training included everything from land preparation, to assembling beds for planting, to preparing organic fertilisers, to field observation and the sale of pumpkin leaves.
https://gyazo.com/c4de1e4a89f2122e05aba9d6e09921ee
Pruning organically grown pumpkins.
My Sending Body, the Bodo Evangelical Lutheran Church, organised these special trainings on its own demo farm so I could share the information, knowledge and learning from ARI with them.
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