Mass Awareness Programs
Dr. Joshy V Cherian has initiated various mass awareness exercises that help various sects in the society understand the benefits of organic farming, environmental protection and decentralized waste management practices. Nowadays, people across the globe are showing concern about ecological and environmental issues. These major issues arise due to rapid increase in population, varied food consumption habits, decrease in acres of arable land, use of chemical and toxic substances to yield more production, etc. As people are getting aware of the environmental and health issues associated with food products, they are demanding for chemical residues and pesticides free food. This leads to a shift in agriculture from conventional farming to sustainable and organic agriculture farming.
There are dozens of such sessions conducted as on date in various colleges, corporations and municipalities.
Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2018) Bio waste Management initiative
Kochi Biennale Foundation is a non-profit charitable trust engaged in promoting art & culture and educational activities in India; primary amongst them the hosting of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, an art exhibition and festival that is the largest of its kind in South Asia. The foundation decided to compost the Bio waste generated during this edition of Biennale instead of sending it to the dump yard. Omega Ecotech has acted as the subject matter expert in providing composting technical solution.
Palanigounder Pudur - Village Transformation
Palanigounder Pudur is a village near Karamadai. Dr. Joshy sir had combined hands with a local NGO named Good shepherd health education center and campaigned about the decentralized waste management benefits and demonstrated the composting process during a gathering. After sustained efforts from Joshy sir, the village was freed from organic waste challenges and all the population started composting organic waste at source.
Anthiyur - A successful Organic/ Sustainable Agriculture Initiative
Anthiyur village in Pollachi & Udumalpet taluk, Coimbatore District is a dry belt with black cotton soil. Because of adverse natural resource pattern, most of the land in this village was lying uncultivated for a long duration. Most of these lands were covered with prosopis. Dr. Joshy sir had taken initiative to transform the village into a profitable agricultural area. There are 30 farmers from this village, who came forward to convert their waste land into a Horticulture farm collectively. Dr.Joshy sir arranged required financial support from NABARD through the local land development bank. Some farmers in this 30 member group have started applying Organic Farming principles and all the farmers have adopted sustainable agricultural practices.
The following critical farming practices were incorporated for successful cultivation:
Large pits were fed with large quantity of composted coir pith, organic manure and other bio inputs were added to these pits before filling up with top soil
– Grafts of Sapota and Amla were planted in the well prepared pits
– Coir baby fibre was used to mulch the root zone area
– Irrigation provided by Drip
– The weeds were permitted to grow in the inter-space. They were helpful in harvesting the sun light and they also support a lot of insects including Honey bee. These weeds were periodically incorporated into the soil using tractor & tiller driven rotovator. The weeds in the root zone were controlled by mulching and slashing.
– Contour bunds were formed to harvest the rain water. Repeated incorporation of weeds into the soil has helped improve the soil organic matter and therefore better infiltration of rain water into the soil.
– Manures and biofertilizers were applied periodically
– A biofence was established using special plants which also act as a wind belt and support a lot of honey bees. Bee plants and other plants for attracting birds were introduced for control of pests.