YACHENAHALLI (MYSURU): While agrarian crisis is driving farmers to suicide in several parts of the country and farm loan waiver tops the political discourse, here is a village that has been scripting an impeccable success story in agriculture without any complaints.
Yachenahalli, a village in T Narasipura taluk about 30 km from Mysuru, has not seen any farmer suicide nor any crop loan default over the past eight years. This despite the agrarian village, with a population of 5,000, witnessing successive droughts over the last three years. More than 90 per cent of the 450 landholding farmers in the village have adopted multi-cropping system to make sure that one or the other crop save them from crisis.
The village has agricultural land of about 1,500 hectares of which 50 per cent is irrigated, 40 percent are pumpsets and 10 percent dry land where paddy, sugarcane, ragi, maize and vegetables are mainly grown. Almost all the farmers grow short term vegetables crop while many have grown long-term timber as a subsidiary along with agricultural crops.
Sugarcane factories not making payments to farmers on time is not at all an issue here as majority of the crop goes to jaggery units that are aplenty in neighbouring Dasegowdanakoppal and Kempegowdanakoppal.
Yathiraj, a farmer, said they have not suffered any losses in agriculture since many years because they do not use the crop loan for any other purpose other than agriculture. Besides, hard work and adoption of technology has paid off.
The credit for the village’s success mainly goes to Yachenahalli Primary Agricultural Credit Co-operative Society established in 2009. The society with an annual turnover of Rs 13 crore lends crop loan of more than Rs 4 crore. Since the inception of the Society, there has not been even one loan defaulter while loan recovery has been 100 per cent.
There are 250 primary agricultural credit co-op societies in Mysuru district out of which 4-5 have been classified as ‘A’ grade depending on loan recovery and other parameters and one among it is Yachenahalli society.
The secret of this, according to its founder-president Y N Shankaregowda, is honesty of all three stake-holders — people who take loan, Society’s Executive Committee members and its staff. He said they have cultivated a sense of honesty among and made farmers realise that if they are honest in their work, then agriculture will not disappoint them.
Hence, complacency has not crept into these farmers and do not get carried away by promises of loan waivers.
Marisiddegowda, who grows paddy, sugarcane and vegetables said it is the co-ordinated efforts of the Society, College of Agriculture (VC Farm), IFFCO which has adopted the village and gram panchayat that has led to the success of the village.
“While the Society gives loan, the college and IFFCO assist and advise us best agricultural practice and gram panchayat provides the necessary support system,” says the farmer.
In the coming days, the farmers are planning to slowly switch over to organic farming eyeing more profit.