Bindu Joseph, an enterprising upland farmer from Kozhikode has won the prestigious Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay Antyodaya Krishi Puraskar-2021 instituted by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), New Delhi.
She received the award from Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Narendra Singh Tomar on July 16, 2022 at a function held in New Delhi to mark the 94th Foundation Day of ICAR.
The award, comprising a purse of rupees one lakh, a citation, and a memento, comes as a recognition for her contributions to marginal, small, and landless farmers. She was nominated for the accolade by the ICAR- Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) at Peruvannamuzhi, functioning under the Indian Institute of Spices Research, Kozhikode.
Officials with KVK, Peruvannamuzhi, said the farmer, hailing from Panthirikkara, grabbed the award with her impressive contributions towards development of sustainable and integrated farming system models, focused programme on soil health and water conservation, farm waste management, diversification of farm activities as sustainable and profitable units, and the horizontal spread of the technology among fellow farmers.
The 44-year old also focussed on mass production of quality planting materials, effective utilisation of land resources and inputs, and innovative methods of dissemination of agricultural knowledge, they said.
In addition to the commercial horticultural nursery they own, Ms. Joseph supported by her husband Jojo experimented with coconut-based farming system in their 3.86 acres of land with black pepper, nutmeg, ginger, turmeric, tubers, vegetable, banana, and other fruit plants as intercrops.
According to KVK officials, the farm is claimed to be the largest bush pepper production unit directly owned and managed by farmers. The total gross annual income from this land is nearly ₹33.75 lakhs, they said.
“Ms. Joseph is also a tech-savvy entrepreneur who runs a YouTube channel named ‘Techflora’ with over 1,00,000 subscribers to share her innovative farming knowledge,” said a senior officer from KVK, Peruvannamuzhi. She also conducts hands-on training to school and college students in both on and off campus modes to help youngsters, he said.
