On the 27^th of January, 2014, our Home Based Project (HBP) in Kundapur guided a farmer, Mr. Shankar (a member of the Dairy Cooperative Society) at Marvanthe to prepare an Azolla cultivation pit. Azolla is an algae species that grows above water without any feeding and provides value addition to milking quantity & fat content in cattle milk.

 

        A month prior to that, we carried out a demonstrative activity to explain to Mr. Shankar about the Azolla species’ utility. A month later, Mr. Shankar could see the increase in milking quantity and fat content rise from 4.5 to 5.6 in lactometer as measured at the Dairy Cooperative Society.

 

 

 

 

This resulted in him establishing a big azolla structure at his own cost on his farm land.

        Mr. Shankar and his wife (Director of the Dairy Cooperative Society) have now become models for other dairy farmers to cultivate this species in order to reduce their drudgery on usual cattle feeds, and increase their livelihoods.