News From GREENS

Theory to practice: JC College of Pharmacy visit

After learning about Greens through word-of-mouth, JC College of Pharmacy, Srimusnam visited with about 55 students.  They have travelled from 160kms from Trichy exclusively to learn about medicinal plants. This is a mandatory field visit and, although the students are studying them as part of the curriculum, this is the first time they have actually seen these plants. A particular hit was our session on True vs Fake - mis-identification of plant species.

National Level Workshop

We have formed a partnership with Bishop Heber College and TDU, Bangalore, to develop a cross-disciplinary approach involving students from Botany and Economics in addressing the conservation challenges and looking for alternative sources of income for the community.  As part of the programme we ran a national level one-day workshop on 8 March.  About 140 students from 5 colleges participated. 

Alexander has been cultivating traditional paddy in his home village.  Over the last 4 years he has been building up soil health until he now has 2 acres under cultivation with 5 different paddy varieties. Now people are curious.  They want to taste the produce and some want to try to cultivate the rice.

Organic farming is not just cultivating the paddy alone.  It also involves understanding how to rear traditional cows and bulls and manage fodder.  The local community needs to be involved over water management issues.

One of the practical difficulties is that the traditional paddy takes around 145 days before it is ready to harvest whereas hybrid paddy takes only 100 - 120 days.  The traditional paddy has to then be protected from domestic animals who graze on the stubble of the hybrid paddy.