IFFCO patriarch Dr U S Awasthi who is ever eager to guide farmers to a fruitful course has advocated the extensive use of social media tool “whatsapp” for them now. He quotes the case of a farmer from Junnar near Pune who created a farmers’ Whatsapp group called “Baliraja” to drive home his point.
Baliraja loosely translates to ‘farmer king’. Anil Bandawane started this WhatsApp group to discuss foreign vegetables like broccoli, zucchini but the biggest discussion is always about soil and the rain, he said.
Since every farmer cannot afford smart phones each member is connected with several poor farmers and tries to guide them on issue of soil, fertilizer, pest and others. They have even tried to stop 10 suicides across five villages by sending messages on the group.
Farmers in Punjab and Haryana are also using WhatsApp but the emphasis there is on yield and technology. Harman Singh Randhawa, an orchardist from Hoshiarpur says “they send me photographs of disease or pests on crops if I am not around. I send them solutions in the form of pictures of chemicals to tackle the problem”.
The story was published in Times of India and an ever vigilant Awasthi picked it up to use it to the benefit of farmers connected with the IFFCO. The cooperative giant has about 40,000 cooperative societies across all states in the country as its members. Tens of thousands of farmers are joined up with the IFFCO as a family.