Impact Of Training Programme Provided By Rural Resource and Training Centre (RRTC) On Dessimination of Organic Farming In Meghalaya

Amit Debnath; Jayasree Datta; Pritin Sontakke; Samik Chowdhury

Volume : IV, Issue : VIII, August - 2014

Impact Of Training Programme Provided By Rural Resource and Training Centre (RRTC) On Dessimination of Organic Farming In Meghalaya

Amit Debnath, Jayasree Datta, Pritin Sontakke, Samik Chowdhury

Abstract :

The Rural Resource and Training Centre (RRTC), Umran, registered as St. Joseph’s Agricultural Training Centre (SJATC), evolved into existence after several years of study and experimentation, as an answer to the critical problems that challenge the vast majority of the rural population of the Northeastern region specially Meghalaya. The most successful organic farming project in RRTC is “Sustainable Practice through Organic Agriculture in Ri–Bhoi District of Meghalaya” from Caritas, Denmark which was started in 2004 and will end on Dec. 2011.Under this project 19 Organic Farmers Clubs (OFC) were formed and 15 OFCs are functioning properly, registration of two cooperative society has been achieved, out of 384 selected farmers 314 farmers started organic farming. Despite the presence of large number of NGOs in the states, the numbers of active and successful NGOs are still limited, since the NGOs are run by people and not directly linked with the government, they also face lots of problems in implementing or undertaking different development programmes for the rural mass to know the extension facility of RRTC in organic farming and also the farmers’ personal characters and perception about organic farming and 30 farmers from Lumkeni village were interviewed by using interview schedule. Farmers are well aware about organic farming but very less people know about bio–fertilizers, almost 63% of the farmers told there are no problems in organic farming and the main problem is marketing and cow dung as most of them do not have their own cow. From the study it was found that almost 60% of the farmers responded that there is very less disease and pest incidence in organic farming and more than 65% of the people uproot the plant if any pest or disease attack is there where as some farmers do not use any treatment and some of them use bio–pesticide.