On May 24, 2019, I had the opportunity to meet the Agriculturalist, V. Ravichandran. I was able to interact with him for about an hour and a half, in which he primarily discussed agriculture and his latest research schemes.
As a Board Member of the Global Farmer’s Network, he had primarily talked about the process of farming in our country- How to plough your crops; when to sow them; weeding and watering, and harvesting.
In this discussion, he had mainly specified that
- Kharif (summer season from July to October) and Rabi (winter season from October to March) are the two main seasons in which people sow a crop.
- In the old days, ploughing used to be done by using oxen to draw the plough lines for the land. But today, we have made an advancement by using machinery.
- Norman Borlaug was the father of the Green Revolution, and he was noted for his work by receiving the Peace Prize. Furthermore, M.S. Swaminathan, the father of the Green Revolution in India, helped in making rice a major exporting product.
- Drip irrigation is a major method to help in water conservation and it helps in making sure that we have a specific amount of water delivered to the particular crop. The amount of water given to a crop is very important because an excess of water can kill a crop.
- Each harvest is marked with a festival to give thanks and celebrate the news of successfully cultivating a new crop.
- Rice is known to be a major causative factor of global warming, as it is known to emit methane into the atmosphere.
- Some companies have now taken the initiative of allowing another community service centre to plant trees in their name for every tree that they use in making their products.
Towards the end of our discussion, we talked briefly about Ancient Tamil History and how palm leaves stored their writings for about 10000 years. He did show me his collection of palm leaf writings and gave me one as a souvenir.
(On the left- V. Ravichandran, the Agriculturalist; On the right- The palm leaf souvenir)
I really loved the experience, cause it helped me gain a lot of information about how agriculture plays a major role in the food that we have and how science plays an equal role in its development.