Thiruvananthapuram: The agriculture department’s ambitious Homestead Cultivation through School Students Project, aimed at growing vegetables on 50 lakh homesteads, kicks off on Saturday though skeptics believe the harsh monsoon is the wrong time to sow seeds. The Rs 11-crore project comprises distributing 50 lakh seed kits among students at 2,500 schools across the state besides entrusting another 5 lakh with Kudumbasree volunteers. Each kit has five assorted vegetables including ladies finger, bitter gourd and snake gourd. Each kit costs Rs 20 but the cost is borne by the department. Students would take seeds home and sow them on their respective premises and tend the plants till the harvest in another three months. At least that’s how the mandarins at the agriculture department have drawn up the scheme. But, sources say, there are ifs and buts. First is the inclement weather, which is densely humid now, and second, many districts with above average rainfall have soggy soil, if not flooded. Sowing in these conditions is the least helpful in engendering another generation of plants. It would be ideal to delay the sowing till October-November or wait till the wet conditions improve. However joint director Komalam M.B. told DC that the department had already passed on instructions to field officers to hold back the programme if the sowing conditions were not favourable. “We are not dumping seeds, we want results. So we have advised our officers accordingly”. Komalam’s advice would be on test on Saturday when the department ’s officers would fan out to schools as per scheduled programme in each of the 14 districts.
