Day 7: Gangapur, Vaijapur, Lasur – An Overwhelming Turnout by Farmers and Government Officials
Running a risk of rain playing spoilsport for our demonstration is a major challenge we were facing since our area was given a red alert by the IMD. Luckily in the morning, the rains really cooperated with us by staying away and we were able to run a successful demonstration.
We visited Gangapur, around 35kms from Aurangabad in MH2. Our journey of MH2 begins from here as we plan on covering Gangapur, Vaijapur and Lasur in one day. When we arrived at the location in Gangapur, the crowd we witnessed was extremely overwhelming. There was already a major crowd gathered at the location. Post the drone setup, we were ready for our first flight in MH2. It was an amazing experience for the farmers who were really excited to watch the drone in action as it sprayed a sugarcane field.
Our second visit was at Vaijapur where we witnessed a large turnout. A jewel to the crown was the presence of the region’s Agriculture Officer, Mr. Awad. He was mighty interested in the demonstration and was very impressed with what he saw. He had a lot of views of how this is going to be a game changing technological prowess which has the capability to change the face of Indian agriculture.
We then visited Lasur which was a welcome change for us. After spraying on cotton and sugarcane field, we got the chance the test the ability of how our drone performs on corn. This also opened us to a host of new questions such as if the drone spray is capable of reaching the deepest corn chutes against Jassids. Another great question was if the drone spray was enough to tackle all the pests considering the spray molecules are very small.
Our drone experts handled the questions with ease which helped improve the farmers’ confidence on the drone service that Syngenta India is planning to launch soon. Our Drone Yatra in MH2 now moves to Chitte Pimplegaon, Badnapur and Kedarkheda. Stay tuned!