We all know that farmers always face struggles with water, equipment, and many more. In that, crop-eating insects are one of the main problems for farmers. We are going to see the story of the farmer who is struggling with the problem of insect biting of crops but he is not the farmer who gets upset by seeing them.
He innovated a trap to keep insects away, from his crops. Let us look into the article to learn about that innovative idea and about the struggles and success of that innovation, we will see everything in it.
Success Story of Farmer’s Innovation To Protect His Crop From Insects
Karibassappa MG a 50-year-old, came from the tiny village of Jigali in Karnataka’s Davanagere district. As he innovated some useful and new equipment for farmers, we are going to see the success story of him in the below points.
- As a young boy, Karibasappa has completed his 10th and has an interest in continuing further, and also he is the first child in his farmers’ family to study.
- However, due to his family’s financial situation, he wasn’t able to continue his studies and needed to join his family to work on their 5-acre farm.
- Normally, when he was in his middle age, farmers used to use bullocks, then after that they switched to tractors, as he wanted to grow his crops, he just changed to horticulture crops.
- So he decided to grow pomegranates, in 2012, he sowed the seeds and took the harvest in 2014.
- As everything was going well, suddenly his harvest was reduced from the last 2 years because of an insect attack.
- As the whole fruit was getting spoiled, due to insect attack, he bought pesticides which cost 4.5 lakhs.
- As they were poor, they were not able to spend that much money on them. So he took out a loan and spent it. But there is no use.
- And he used to think about it for many days on how to get rid of this situation.
Challenges Faced By Karibasappa (Innovative Farmer)
When he was continuously thinking about solutions for insect attacks day and night, he got to find them but even though he faced many challenges, we will look into that innovation and challenge in the below points.
- And one day he got an idea from the surroundings of their farm.
- Previously Karibasappa had a small hut on their farm and there was no electricity, so he fixed a solar bulb and observed how the insects were attracted to the bulb.
- The next day, he bought the DC solar bulb and fixed it, but this time he kept a bucket under it and left it for 3-4 days and he noticed that are lot of insects fell down in the bucket.
- Immediately after seeing these insects he took them and went to ICAR Taralabalu Krishi Vigyan Kendra, in Davanagere. And showed them to a scientist.
- And the scientist told him to continue the experiment with different colored lights and he kept on tweaking until the results were satisfactory.
- The first model of the solar panel he invented was 2 by 2 feet with a 10w battery. But it was big and expensive. Even they should change the batteries every day. And even if it was so expensive, farmers could not able to afford it.
- Eventually, he reduced the size of the
- The current solar trap he is using is the fourth-generation model.
- After making the product, small and affordable, many farmers were not convinced of his product and he faced many challenges to convince them.
- Some of them spread rumors on his product that his product will kill the insects which are good for the crop too.
- Again he showed the scientific studies that his product was good.
Awards That He Got For His Hardwork
Look into the below points to know how he got the award overnight which he didn’t expect.
- One day he saw about Aarohan social innovation awards in the newspaper and he filled it up by taking his manager’s help as everything was in English. They attach some videos of their work too.
- For the final round, Infosys called him to their office.
- Due to his innovation, Infosys felicitated and awarded him with 5 lakh rupees.
- After that, he became more famous as newspapers and TV channels reached him after the award that he got from Infosys.
Final Outcomes
Hope this article, about a farmer who stopped his studies and made great inventions for his farm as a farmer, has provided a solution to many farmers who are unable to find this insect attack and losing their money.
Now, his product is reaching all over the world, and even in other countries like Malaysia, UK, Bahrain, Nepal, and Australia, people are also asked for samples.
It is also an inspirational story for every person who is well educated and thinks that they cannot achieve anything in life.