Intensive vegetable rice rotation

Sagolsem Sumanglal Singh, SMS (PBG), KVK, Thoubal
It is the story of Shri Sapam Lukhoi of Wabagai Thingel Leikai, Kakching a progressive and innovative farmer who is a very dedicated, hardworking and honest farmer. As conveyed by him, he owns a piece of land measuring about 0.5 ha, where he takes up various farming activities some of which are highlighted here particularly the inclusion of a method of rice cultivation that seems to be very striking and innovative one.
He is aware of the agricultural situation in Manipur where most of the paddy fields remain fallow after kharif season. He has seen the situation of crops grown after rice such as cabbage, potato, pulses – mainly pea and oilseeds- mainly rapeseed and mustard in some pockets. He observed that these crops were not very profitable. The vegetables are grown by most of the growers as single crop on their land holdings due to which prices fetched are very low due to over-flooding of those vegetables in the market. Moreover, rice cultivation is also not very profitable due to very high cost of cultivation. Mr. Lukhoi Singh had faced floods and droughts very often in his field due to which his crops were destroyed.
Response/Initiative
Considering all these problems, he thought of trying out some crop combinations in order to get maximum profit by utilizing his small piece of land and thus he had planned his crops in such a manner that maximum benefits could be achieved. So, he took up mainly various kinds of vegetable cultivation in a very much intensive planned manner since vegetables fetch much higher income. He included rice in between the vegetables to make it vegetable rice rotation. Whenever he grows the crops, he thoughtfully follows most of the agronomic principles to the fullest possible benefit from them. In the present story, the principles he has followed are inter cropping, relay cropping, mixed cropping, minimum tillage, crop rotation, crop diversification etc.
(To be contd)