Day 19: Idar, Himatnagar, Revas – Farmers’ Day Out
Welcome to Day 3 in Gujarat for our Syngenta Drone Yatra. We are officially on Day 19 of our demonstrations. It has been a long journey till now, but we are just getting started. Today, our journey will be taking us to Idar, Himatnagar, and Revas in Gujarat after which we finish the Gujarat leg and move towards Rajasthan.
We began our day with the first demonstration in Idar. A good turnout of farmers were present for the demonstration to witness the drone in action on a groundnut field. After the demonstration, one of the lead farmers made a very interesting point. Groundnuts being such a crop that grows below ground, when they move in the field to spray during rains, the crop is at risk to be trampled, and the trampled crop does not give any output. Using drones, the risk of loss of crops can be eliminated.
Post completion of the event we moved to the next location in Himatnagar. Himatnagar also had a substantial farmer turnout where we did the usual brief and demonstration. The farmers here were very impressed with the technology and enquired about purchasing the drone. We provided them the info that they need not spend lakhs of rupees on purchasing a drone, they can simply opt for Syngenta’s service which is more cost effective and it costs them less than the labor cost they currently need to pay.
We then moved on to our last location in Gujarat which was Revas. Revas was an interesting event since we wanted to do something special here as it was the last location. Alas! Rain tried to play spoilsport here and when we arrived, the rain had taken full swing. We had to wait for some time until the rain subsided for us to conduct the demonstration. We took shelter in a nearby cover and provided the farmers with a briefing about the drone.
Many farmers questioned about the limitations of the drone that it cannot fly in the rains. Our field team had a perfect response for it. It is anyways not advised to spray in the rains as the effect of the chemicals will not be experienced, so it doesn’t matter if the drone can work or not. The farmers were satisfied with it. Once the rain stopped, we proceeded for the demonstration, post which there was a quick Q&A and then we packed up and put a close to the Gujarat leg of the Drone Yatra.
We have now covered 3 states in the Drone Yatra from Maharashtra to Madhya Pradesh and now Gujarat. We have 10 more states to cover, so the road is long, but we are strong. Stay tuned as we begin our journey of Rajasthan very soon.