HUBLI: Mahatma Gandhi had a dream of a ‘Gram Swaraj’ where farmers live independent lives with their own efforts. Part of that dream has come to true in a village where farmers with the help of an NGO are generating biogas and electricity, practicing organic farming, agro forestry and are producing cooking oil. This is a result of organic farming, agro forestry, cooking oil production, biogas and electricity production integrated into one comprehensive programme of rural development executed by Renuka Foundation of Kallur village in Gadag. The foundation has made a silent revolution and farmers have begun living independently in many aspects. The project was started three years ago with small farmers being organised into groups for organic cultivation of one lakh trees of Moringa (Nugge), Pongammia (Honge), Simarouba and Jathropa along with chilli and cotton. Farmers of Kallur, Nalavadi, Annigeri and Navalagund joined hands in a unique initiative and as of now 500 farmers holding 2,000 acres are certified organic farmers.The seeds produced by these trees are crushed in a highly efficient oil press purchased from Germany. The produced oil is distributed to the village women along with a stove specially developed by Bosch and Siemens, Germany. This stove can run directly on the plant oil and gives heat equivalent to LPG. The village women thus find an alternative fuel for cooking or water heating and save the drudgery of collecting firewood.The cake left behind after crushing the oil seeds are fed into a high performance temperature controlled bio-gas plant, also brought from Germany. This plant produces electricity which is used presently for running the oil press and a pulveriser for chillies produced by the farmers. Along the way, the foundation added agro forestry elements to the farms because of the chronic shortage of green manure for compost making. Here, the foundation used the ingenuity of its German partner and grew a selected species of oilseed-bearing trees.The gas produced in the plant is fed into a modified gas gen-set which produces electricity capacity of 13.4 KV. This electricity is being used to run post-harvest processing plants for chilli and cotton. Plans are on the anvil to set up a community centre which will have a laundry machine, a water purification plant, a computer centre for village children and an education centre for the farmers. The slurry left out in the methanation system is a highly nutritious organic fertiliser and is distributed among the farmers.
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