Louis Dreyfus Company recently organised an effective meeting and field visit to train progressive cotton farmers in the village Dhamera, Hanumakonda district of Hyderabad, Telangana.
Sumeet Mittal, Cotton Platform Head of LDC, and Gangadhara S, Senior Manager Research, were present at the meeting. Cotton farmers in Telangana have been producing 8 to 10 quintals per acre for 15 to 20 years.
Project Jagruti was launched in late 2021 in response to a pink bollworm outbreak and farmers' lack of pest management knowledge, which resulted in massive losses for farmers. Cotton pest management had the potential to increase yield by 3-5 quintals per acre.
As part of their commitment to empowering farming communities of smallholder farmers in India, the Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC) began training and supporting local cotton farmers in adopting more sustainable agricultural practices in early 2022.
The project included a series of educational workshops. Specific methods were demonstrated during the workshops, along with technical advice from experts, to help reduce yield loss due to pest infestation, thereby increasing production and income.
LDC has so far trained over 2,500 farmers in scientific and technical pest control methods and provided them with over 15,000 pheromone traps through the project.
LDC will launch its second series of workshops in southern and central India in September 2022, aiming to reach a total of over 7,500 farmers across India's cotton-growing states, and will distribute 40,000 pheromone traps by the end of the year for effective pink bollworm management.
So far, Project Jagriti has covered approximately 7500 hectares in the states of Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka.
