‘It will provide long term sustainable ecological and economic empowerment to farmers’
In the last week of May 2021, when large areas of the Sundarbans were flooded with salt water under the influence of Cyclone YasiThis season, farmers across the district had given up hope of a new crop. Based on prior experiences of cyclones, many farmers like Biswajit Jana thought that they would not take up farming for the next few years.
However, a unique project of soil salinity improvement in Sonagaon village of Gosaba block has given hope to many farmers of the area.
restoration project
A group of conservationists and scientists have come together in this restoration project, which is cultivating paddy in a 10-bigha plot months after a cyclone devastated the landscape. “Usually, the focus is on short-term relief in the Sundarbans after a cyclone, but what we tried to do is provide long-term sustainable ecological and economic empowerment to the people,” said Diya Banerjee of Uttarayan Wildlife. Hindu.
Ms Banerjee said that initially those behind the desalination project were not sure about the success, but the paddy yield has taken everyone by surprise. The novel initiative is supported by Uttarayan Wildlife and Nature Mets has provided logistics support to the initiative. Both the organizations have been working in the Sundarbans for a long time.
Pradeep Sen, retired additional director of research, agriculture department, said the only technology known for desalination is freshwater irrigation which is very difficult in the Sundarbans.
“Salinity of the plot” after the cyclone 17.4 ds / m . Was [salinity is measured using deciSiemens per metre -dS/m] But it decreased to 2.04 dS/m after the desalination exercise. We also cultivated a variety of paddy which is relatively less resistant to soil salinity and the production has been very encouraging,” said Dr Sen, who is associated with Uttarayan wildlife and provides scientific support for the desalination exercise.
Scientists said that a special process of desalination was followed by which all the water came out naturally.
organic manure, paddy husk mixture
“The mud that was in the soil, we mixed a mixture of organic manure and paddy husk and allowed it to remain so for two to three weeks before sowing the paddy,” he said.
The people behind the initiative are of the opinion that the restoration of salinity of the soil and reclaiming for agriculture should be done on a large scale in the Sundarbans. It will not only provide food security but also become a tool to empower people in ecologically fragile ecosystem. In the aftermath of the cyclones, the government has been offering farmers to cultivate salt tolerant varieties of paddy, but no such model was tried to restore and retrieve soil salinity in the region.
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