The Covid-19 situation in India is becoming increasingly difficult over time, fortunately there are a high number of asymptomatic patients and a lower mortality rate. There are currently more than 1.9 million Covid-19 cases in India. In the meantime, there are also cases in rural areas.
After the nationwide lockdown phase from 23 March to 31 May (10 weeks!), India is now in the middle of lifting the lockdown process. There are loosenings for regular economic activities, but not at social gatherings.
bioRe@ Association has conducted various Covid19 awareness campaigns in the villages of the farmers’ families and bioRe® India has supported the organic farmers with some relief with their seed.
The bioRe activities started with certain restrictions during the lockdown phase and only with special permission from the state, which was granted for work in agriculture to ensure the cotton sowing in May 2020.
The lockdown and seed supply in the sowing season
The concern experienced by Vivek Rawal, CEO of bioRe® India Ltd., during the lockdown in April and May that the supply of seeds could be affected by the crisis has fortunately not materialized with the worst-case scenario:
“Fortunately, we have been able to distribute seeds to most of our farmers. However, it was a great challenge for us to process and package our seeds as the national barriers and all seed processing facilities were closed.
In addition, we had no possibility to organize hand sorting with workers. Thankfully we still managed to have our seeds processed. We had the advantage of having our own GMO test laboratory, so we could test our seeds for GMO with a digital ELISA system, as all GMO test laboratories were closed. In general we can say that we were able to do a very good job under the most difficult circumstances and were able to supply our farmers with our own seeds and thus reach about 70% of the target area”.
From June 2020 the field work could be carried out again
Due to the nationwide lockdown, the problem of labour shortages arose at first. Many workers who had migrated to the cities returned to the villages in May and could only start work after the necessary quarantine.
Until the end of May, the farmers were allowed to go to work in the fields for the Rabi harvest (wheat) and prepare the fields for cotton and soya. From June onwards, there was no longer a significant shortage of labour for the farmers in connection with sowing and growing rice and cotton.
Also a large part of the planned farmer training courses had to be postponed due to the circumstances. Nevertheless, the farmers were able to receive individual advice in June and July 2020 from bioRe® Association and bioRe® Ltd.
