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Amid shortage of labourers, farmers in Belagavi use drones to spray fertilisers
Farmers in the village were impressed with the practice and were suggested to use it in their fields.
Due to shortage of labourers and increase in wages in the agriculture sector, farmers in Belagavi taluk have started using drones to spray fertilisers in the fields.
Utilising the concessional rate demonstration offer from a drone agency, a farmer from Kadoli village in Belagavi taluk successfully sprayed the chemical fertiliser in his five-acre sugarcane field using a drone machine, last Thursday. Since it was a first-time demonstration in northern Karnataka, dozens of other farmers were invited to witness the demonstration. The farmers were impressed and were suggested to use it in their fields too.
The Industrial Farmers Fertilisers Cooperative Ltd (IFFCO), a fertiliser manufacturing company, in association with Chennai based Garuda Aerospace company, developed the drone machine to facilitate the farmers to overcome the non-availability of labourers and to minimise its cultivation expenditure.
Ramesh Mayannache, a farmer, agreed for the demonstration trail of IPSCO spraying drone at his five acres of land in the village.
Ashwin from Garuda Aerospace sprayed 50 litres of chemical fertiliser from a drone machine in just 50 minutes, where as it would take five labourers to complete the work in five days. “Only ten liters of water is required to spray liquid fertiliser to one acre. It reduces the wastage of fertiliser, water and saves the time of farmers. We have planned to demonstrate the same throughout the state and make known the farming community about the use the technology,”Ashwin told HT.
Mayannache who has cultivated sugarcane in his field told HT that the agency charged ₹300 to spray on an acre of land and for five acre he had to pay ₹ 1,500. However, as it was a demo-trail, he was just charged ₹600. He said earlier he used to employ five labourers to spray who used to complete the work in five days, for whom he used to pay ₹400 per day. For five days, the total wage used to be ₹10,000, while using drone, ₹9,400 were saved.
“By using drone, not only I saved the time but also lot of my money,” he said. Adding that the drone works excellent, Ramesh said, more than a dozen farmers from his village are in queue to use the drone to spray the chemical fertiliser. “We are happy to see how easy it is to give fertiliser to the field by drone sprayer. It saves a lot of effort and time. If the results are good, we will start using this drone sprayer for all the crops. We have used nano fertilisers such as DAP, UREA of IFFCO company,” Ramesh said.
Manjunath Chickmath who has 10 acres of irrigated land in Pant Balekundri village in Belagavi taluk said that youths are leaving farming due to a lot of issues. “Hundreds of acres of land which used to yield outstanding harvest have now turned barren. Many left their land due to non-availability of labourers. The drone machines have arrived as the boon to the sector where farm owners can easily carryout the farm work,” he said.
Appanna Desai, the president of Karnataka Rajya Raita Sangha mattu Hasiru Sene, an organisation that deals in supply of seeds, fertiliser, agriculture equipment etc, said,“The drone machine has come to us as a great last resort to our community which is facing labour problem. It can be more helpful to the agriculture sector in days to come. Impressed with the successful demonstration of drone machine, many farmers ordered the Garuda Aerospace agency to spray in their fields too.”
