Jai Chaitanya Dasa has been developing some interesting ideas for growing sugar cane at Iskcon Farm, near Bangalore, Karnataka Southern India. Firstly, he was unhappy with it being a monoculture, so he has devised ways of growing sugar cane in amongst paddy and vegetable crops.
This also provides an extra income for the farmers with no extra work. He saw that the main need of sugar cane was sunlight, not so much water, and so he next developed a way to open up the canes to allow more light in, plus increase production for a smaller plant out. He plants single ratoons out, and when the shoot is 2 feet height, he cuts it back to 3”, around the 2nd month. The sugar cane then coppices and grows 5 shoots, from the one plant and he is able to get the same yield as before with one cane per plant at 2 x 2 spacing per acre.
He plants out two rows of sugar cane, 2ft x 2ft apart, with 9 feet green manure strips between the sugar cane rows. In the green manure strips plant out Sun hemp (Crotalaria) at the rate of 20-30 kg per acre. (This Sunhemp can also work as a trap crop for stem borers
The 9 feet or 12 feet strip can be green manure, paddy or vegetable, or a rotation of all. The basic idea is to decrease the water wastage, avoid monoculture, provide an extra income, maintain the yield of sugarcane as in monoculture, and reduce pest and disease incidence. |
