Nagpur: The concept of Agro Tourism is catching up fast across India. Agro Tourism, as it is defined most broadly, involves any agriculturally based operation or activity that brings visitors to a farm. The concept behind Agro Tourism is aimed at making the atmosphere study-oriented and tourism boosting apart from the traditional farming. The fresh example of the concept taking the dream shape is Vednandini Agro Tourism premises near Akola. The idea behind the Agro Tourism is to effectively deal with infertile or uncultivable land, unreliability of electricity, misuse of water, moody behavior of nature the reasons that are primarily responsible for farmer suicides in Vidarbha.
The primary objective of the Agro Tourism venture launched by Vednandini is aimed at making farmers prosperous without depending on Government alms. The farmers in Vidarbha only think of age old traditional farming. But considering the present volatile situation, both natural and unnatural (man-made), prodding them to look beyond the traditional farming and go for other cash crops such as fruits, vegetables, flowers etc was need of the hour. This challenge was accepted by the pioneering figure behind Vednandini Agro Tourism. And after four years of hard work and struggle the concept has reached to its fruitful destination. Today, the premises of Vednandini Agro Tourism are being taken rounds and rounds by experts from Agriculture Research Centre, Agriculture University, students, organizations and farmers. All these people are gaining valuable knowledge after spending hours and observing the finer points of working. More importantly, the premises have emerged as tourism spot with hundreds of nature lovers undertaking excursions along with families and cherishing the moments of in the company of scenic beauties and inspiring others to visit the spot in their life time.
Praksh Pohre, the man behind the Agro Tourism venture in Akola, spent several years (1985-1997) in agitating and fighting for interests of farmers. But when he found that the aims are not getting fulfilled Pohre turned to writing. The write-ups of Pohre were aimed at waking up both Government and farmers as well. But the deep slumbering Government and farmers had no effect of the stinging write-ups. Disgusted, Pohre himself took to farming and decided to something different. His farming was based on domestic techniques, domestic fertilizers and domestic measures to deal with adversities. Connected to the venture since 2011, today Pohre’s glowing face tells the success tale. He has proved that positive thinking and positive efforts can do wonders. If others follow his example he would be inspirational person.
However, the bitter truth is that nobody wants to stay in villages, nobody wants to do farming. In this disturbing situation of rapid urbanisation, Pohre focused his priorities on creating lucrative agriculture profession in villages and inspiring people to venture in it. For this, Pohre adopted the latest and income-oriented farming experiments successfully. And the result is, a number of experts, teachers, students, farmers and nature lovers got attracted, naturally.
The traditional farming has been added with latest techniques in the premises of Vednandini Agro Tourism near Akola. In this era and natural and manmade adversities, if farmers of Vidarbha adopt the model of Pohre then their lifestyle would see a change, a change for better. The foremost aspect of Pohre’s model is perfect planning of water. The adopters of Pohre model would never depend on Government alms. The demonstration of the model could be witnessed in the farm spread over 45 acres. Pohre is demonstrating his model of success and training the farmers regularly. Moreover, Pohre is inviting a horde of families and nature lovers and treating them with the food prepared from the very produce of his farm. Fun and frolic like mud bath, rain dance, water fountain show, camel riding, swimming, stay in hut etc are part of Vednandini Agro Park.
In this Agro Park, perfect guidance is provided to the visitors on a variety of subjects such as agriculture utility tools, machineries, bio-fertilisers, liquid fertilizers, bio-technology, tissue culture, drip irrigation, water planning, green house, dairy, poultry, fruit park, floriculture, nurseries, organic farming, agriculture processing industry, packaging technology, herbal and medicine plantation, animal husbandry, crop protection, and other aspects.
Pohre expressed his expectations from Government such as providing water facilities to every small-big farms (on the lines of water connections to every plot in urban areas) and work for needy persons under MGNREGA. If Government accords priority to these aspects, the farms and farmers would be on the progressive path.
Rajeev Ranjan Kushwaha(rajeev.nagpurtoday@
