AGRICULTURE AND IRRIGATION

MANURES

The cultivator is aware of the benefits accruing from the application of organic manures. The amount of farmyard manure or compost to be applied depends upon the nature of the crop as well as the fertility and quality of the soil. If irrigation facilities are available as in the case of garden lands, liberal doses of manure are applied, whereas soils in which cotton, bananas, citrus fruits, chillis, etc., are produced require heavy manurial replacement to provide adequate nutrition to the plants. Hence, they require careful and liberal manuring. Generally two kinds of manures, chemical fertilizers and rural and town compost are applied by the cultivators.

Rural and Town Compost.—Compost is prepared by conserving cattle urine, dung and litter in pits of various sizes. The conversion of town and farm refuse into compost manure is becoming more common in this district. The Agriculture Department has induced municipalities and grampanchayats in the district to produce compost manure from the town refuse, cow-dung, stable litter etc., collected and disposed of by them. The Government gives a subsidy to compost preparing centres with a view to stepping up the production and distribution of compost manure.

The Agriculture Department is making every effort to popularise compost preparation in rural areas by grampanchayats and cultivators from the available rural waste and rubbish. This is done with a view to ensuring increased supply of organic manures which are in short supply in the district.

Farmyard Manures.— The use of farmyard manure on an average is 1,40,000 tons in the district. The Department of Agriculture gives expert advice regarding the method of preparation of farmyard manure which aims at avoiding loss of nitrogen and at improving its manurial value.

Green Manuring.—One of the important methods of enriching the soil is green manuring. The Department of Agriculture has introduced the scheme for distribution of sann seed for green manuring in the district. It helps to improve the fertility and the texture of the soils. When the method of green manuring is adopted the sann seed is broadcast on the onset of the monsoon. When it attains maximum vegetative growth in about two to two and a half months, it is ploughed and allowed to rot. An acre of land so manured with sann seed receives organic manure, sufficient for a period of two to three years.

Sheep Folding.—The waste of sheep and goats also serves as a valuable manure. There are shepherds in the district who wander from village to village with their flocks of sheep, each numbering over a thousand heads. The farmers enter into contracts with the shepherds for quartering their sheep on farms during the night. Herds of from one to two hundred goats and sheep are sometimes folded on field after harvest. One thousand goats and sheep give five or six cart-loads of manure during the night. The flocks of sheep and goats are moved from place to place in the same farm during the night so as to ensure even distribution of urine and their droppings over the field.

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