To understand the difference this makes, consider this: Andhra farmers were notorious for their indiscriminate use of pesticide —spending as much as Rs 10,000 per acre, spraying as much as 10-15 times, not only increasing cost several fold but also reducing soil productivity.

This year, the cotton crop is good and most farmers are making a neat profit. If nature played a role, there was nurture as well. Thanks to classes at the field schools, pesticide control has been hammered into a new precept.

The results are visible: Adilabad’s pesticide sale, of mainly Monochrotophos and Endosulfan, has come down from 70 tonnes a year to 18 tonnes. One reason is Bt cotton which now covers 100% of the total cotton fields in Andhra Pradesh (only 60% of the Vidarbha crop is Bt and its yield this year has been less than expected). But key to Andhra’s solution is the close, regular interaction between farmers and state extension officers.

Take Adilabad’s Rampur village early one morning this week. About 30 farmers gather around Agriculture Officer V Veeraiah who is all set with books, charts, papers and crayons to explain how to cut costs in the nine months his students have to tends to cotton fields.

They have chosen a two-acre field as a classroom, on one acre he demonstrates how certain techniques can be employed to reduce costs without compromising yields. The other acre is left as a control group, for conventional farming to compare and contrast.

“The basic aim is to save friendly insects who do the job of killing other pests,” Veeraiah tells the farmers as he shows them how to use simple kits to test level of nutrients in the soil and identify which ones need to be supplemented.

... contd.