With the help of organic farming, Omkar Gowda from Karnataka is a successful farmer, growing millets
Bengaluru: Omkar Gowda is a farmer by profession who hails from Haveri, Karnataka.
He has been growing millets for the last twenty years.
What is special about his farming is that he refuses chemical fertilisers and uses only compost.
Omkar Gowda owns forty acres of land. He also grows ground nuts, jowar and byadagi chillies.
Way back when he used to use chemical fertilisers, the lack of rains would have a terrible effect on the crops. These crops did not have the strength to sustain the heat.
He says, “I did not want to grow crops that could not sustain vagaries of nature. I spoke to experts in organic farming in detail. It is then that I decided to use organic fertilisers in my fields”.
After returning to his fields, he dedicated a large area to producing compost. He uses it as a fertiliser to grow crops in his fields. Because of this, the crops also sustain the changes in weather.
This is on the menu in his house!
For Omkar, millets literally abound. Daily, be it breakfast or lunch or dinner, the menu if full of dishes made out of millets.
So millets have become an integral part of his life.
His method of sowing seeds is nothing short of being meticulous. He maintains a distance of 14 inches between rows. On the eighth day of sowing, seeds begin to sprout. The harvesting happens a little later.
What is interesting to note is that Omkar has divided his fields into three segments, each measuring 13 acres. Every year, he fertilises every part with 25-50 tractor loads of compost.
He also rears oxen which help in ploughing the field.
With such successful techniques, Omkar really heaps a rich harvest.
It is farmers like him that stand as a role model for others.
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