Oct 15, 2020
Corteva Agriscience farm intervention in five states, like Maharashtra and Karnataka, has helped smallholding farmers growing corn earn benefits. It claimed that training on new agri-methods and adoption of farm mechanization among other interventions has led to a “much-needed increase in income” of small farmers.
The company says that been working to empower smallholder farmers across five large Indian regions by enabling them to mechanize their corn crop production and providing training on new agricultural methods that increase plant population, crop productivity, and profitability for farmers.
In Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Telangana, Karnataka, and Rajasthan, Corteva said it has distributed corn seed planters to select farmers at subsidized prices and give them access to high-yield potential/low-cost maize hybrids suitable for the agro-climate.
This offers better control over maize seed production than the traditional regional practice of using high-yield/high-cost hybrids for narrow areas and low-cost seeds for the remainder, which reduced productivity.
The company also trained these farmers on agronomic practices and usage of seed planters held demonstrations of seed and fertilizer machines to enable best practices, introduced accurate drying practices and established cold storage units as well as sorting, grading, and packing units.
In addition to farm mechanization, Corteva claims have also focused on empowering 12,000 tribal women corn farmers. This included training on agricultural methods, providing smart crop production technology and establishing an ecosystem of ‘farmer producer companies’ (FPC) to create market linkages and an end-to-end value chain.
As a result of these efforts, the farmers in these five regions were able to optimally use the brief window availab