The Hindu : Front Page : Agriculture students turn farmers

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Sunday, Sep 23, 2007
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Agriculture students turn farmers

Amutha Kannan

TNAU students get hands-on training during the second year of study

COIMBATORE: This is the age where students get hands-on training before stepping out of the portals of a college. They are sent to an industry that is related to the course they are pursuing during the fourth or fifth semester in order to be industry-ready when they step out as graduates.

On the same lines, B. Sc. Agriculture students of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University get hands-on training during the second year of study. They do not go to any industry; but they become farmers in the true sense of the word. A batch is given a wetland of roughly 1.68 acres in the farm of TNAU to cultivate rice as part of a programme called‘Earn While You Learn’.

The four-month-long programme goes on simultaneosly with theory classes. The students do land preparation, irrigation, fertilizer spraying, weeding, harvesting, thrashing and weighing of the marketable produce. Each student gets two cents of the land to work on. The inputs and implements are provided to them. And, there is no help or assistance of any kind. The labour and costs are all theirs.

After the harvest when the marketable produce is obtained, it is sold at Rs. 6 per kg. After the sale, the profit is worked out deducting the production costs and each student is paid the profit amount that usually varies between Rs. 150 to 350, as an incentive. This year’s group consists of 52 girls and 32 boys.

This year’s land preparation and transplanting began in August with Vice-Chancellor C. Ramasamy planting alongside the students. “The students are in the mid-stages of paddy growing. The harvest is expected to be done in December. They have followed the new rice cultivation system called ‘System of Rice Intensification’, for more yield. This system follows planting a single seedling that is 14 days old. The seedlings were raised in a nursery and transplanted,” says S. Natarajan, Director, Centre for Soil and Crop Management Studies of the TNAU.

Students also get to raise maize or sunflower as a garden land crop. Since the land is not suited for any dry land crop, this cultivation is not undertaken. The programme is designed in such a way as to develop skill and confidence in the agricultural students to become independent farm developers.

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