Monthly Archives: January 2018

How areca farms in Karnakata are nurtured by the bounties of foliage forests

Dry grass from the savannahs is harvested between December and May every year and also used as cattle fodder during the trying summer months. | Photo Credit: M.A. SRIRAM
Dry grass from the savannahs is harvested between December and May every year and also used as cattle fodder during the trying summer months. | Photo Credit: M.A. SRIRAM

Soppinabettas are vital sources of mulch and manure, fruit and fodder

The small, door-less thatched hut — only large enough to shelter one person — looks out of place, standing alone on the forest’s edge. As we approach it, an acrid smell hits us. Grey smoke wafts from a wood fire on the floor, above which is a large batch of uppage or Malabar tamarind halfway through the process of curing.

Rudra Gowda, an areca and paddy farmer in Hukkali village in Karnataka’s Uttara Kannada district, collected the uppage from a soppinabetta (a forest patch allocated to him) nearby. “We get only ₹80 per kilo of uppage now, but it is very useful,” he says. “The oil from the seeds is good for cooking and we make alcohol with the fruit.”

The soppinabettas of northern Karnataka harbour a staggering diversity of trees, and fruit extraction is just one of the economic activities that these heavily-managed forests support. Areca (and sometimes paddy) farmers in districts including Shimoga, Chikmagalur and Uttara Kannada have usufruct rights over these foliage or leaf manure forests: they collect green foliage and dry leaf litter to use as crop manure.

The foliage also arrests weed growth and soil erosion, while maintaining soil moisture. Wood collected from these forests are a primary source of fuel. And as for medicine, “everyone in our village knows what plant to harvest from the forests for common illnesses,” says Rudra.

Post-monsoon bounty

Soppinabettas often comprise savannahs and grasslands, where farmers graze their livestock. Post-monsoon, several grasses — locally known as karada (often a mix of native grass species like Themeda triandra) and prized as a mulch plant for areca – grow in the bettas. Farmers take special care to fence off their livestock from the bettas during this time. Dry grass is harvested between December and May every year and also used as cattle fodder during the trying summer months.

While farmers have extracted these resources and nurtured these forests for around 2,000 years, they got official rights to use them in the late 1860s when the British allocated patches to farming households to prevent them from harvesting vegetation from natural forests. “The British gave us these lands,” says Raghunath Gowda, who owns a 25-acre areca farm in Ammenalli village in Uttara Kannada and has rights over almost 225 acres of soppinabetta. “Now the forest department has given us papers to support our rights after a re-survey.”

On paper, for every acre of areca crop, farmers have access to up to nine acres of forest; paddy cultivators receive up to four acres for each acre of rice in some areas.

Dry grass from the savannahs is harvested between December and May every year and also used as cattle fodder during the trying summer months. | Photo Credit: M.A. SRIRAM
Dry grass from the savannahs is harvested between December and May every year and also used as cattle fodder during the trying summer months. | Photo Credit: M.A. SRIRAM

Scientists studying the soppinabettas of Sringeri hill town (Chikmagalur district) in 2011 found that individual farmers collect around 31 metric tonnes of leaf litter and approximately 19 metric tonnes of green foliage every year.

Yet, despite such high resource extraction and human activity, soppinabettas  remain crucial habitats for biodiversity. Scientists observed as many as 114 bird species in the areca-betta landscape of Uttara Kannada; other teams have recorded more than 220 species of trees and 41 orchid species in Sringeri. Then there are the mammals: Raghunath says he has seen wild boar, leopards, gaur and sambhar in these lands.

But today, encroachment and over-extraction threaten the bettas. Legal provisions to create more agricultural areas have also caused reductions in betta lands in some areas, says Sharachchandra Lele, Senior Fellow at Bengaluru’s Ashoka Trust for Ecology and Environment, who has studied the soppinabetta system in Uttara Kannada. “In some districts, there has been extensive conversion to coffee or other plantation crops,” he says.

A sense of ownership

In 2012, scientists found that areca plantations consume six times more compost than paddy fields but generate almost four times more revenue; so farmers in Sringeri were increasingly converting paddies to areca plantations, putting a strain on bettas.

And yet, “It turns out that betta use is sustainable because there is individual control over them,” says Lele. “It has belied the claims of British and Indian foresters that such rights would, or has, led to outright forest degradation.”

“The tragedy of the commons has been largely averted because of the sense of ownership each farmer has over his betta,” says Indu K. Murthy, consultant scientist at the Centre for Sustainable Technologies, Indian Institute for Sciences. “A lot depends on the individual farmer and how he manages his soppinabetta.”

To ensure that farmers do not extract too much vegetation, Karnataka’s forest laws mandate that every hectare of betta should contain a minimum of 100 trees, of which 50 should be forest species. Raghunath however, claims he does not know of such conditions. And yet the importance of conserving the land is clear to him.

“Without soppinabettas, our areca plantations will not be productive. So we make sure it is well maintained and that we extract vegetation from different areas of the betta each year.”

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Sci-Tech> Agriculture – Field Notes / by Aathira Perinchery / January 06th, 2018

Over 2,000 audiologists from India, abroad to attend Mysuru ISHA meet

The Mysuru chapter of the Indian Speech and Hearing Association (MyISHA) is set to host the golden jubilee conference of the Indian Speech and Hearing Association (ISHA) in Mysuru. The conference will be attended by over 2,000 audiologists and speech language pathologists from India and aboard.

The 50th annual convention of the Indian Speech and Hearing Association will be held from Friday to Sunday at the All-India Institute of Speech and Hearing (ISHACON) — the birthplace and headquarters of the association. Governor Vajubhai Vala will inaugurate the 50th ISHACON at AIISH Gymkhana campus here at 6.15 p.m. on Friday. Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar, the scion of the Mysuru royal family, will be the guest of honour.

The scientific session of the conference will start with homage to the founders of the ISHA. Dr. N. Rathna, Prof. Ramesh Oza, and Dr. Shailaja Nikam, signatories of the memorandum of association of ISHA in 1967, will talk about its golden era. Other senior members of the association. Dr. N.P. Nataraja, Dr. M. Jayaram, and Dr. Shivashankar N. will be addressing the delegates during the session, a release stated here.

The deliberations and discussions at the conference will add a wealth of knowledge to the participants who will learn about the state-of-the-art techniques in diagnosis and rehabilitation of communication problems.

Experts in the field will deliver lectures on diverse topics such as language recovery in aphasia, paediatric feeding disorders, and intervention, professional voice management, motor speech disorders in neuro-developmental syndromes, dead regions of the cochlea, clinical applications of OAE, cross check principles of diagnostic audiology, certification of disability, and funding opportunities for aid and appliances, the release added. In addition, around 220 research papers will be presented by students and professionals at the conference.

Prior to the conference, six workshops will be held on Thursday to enable delegates to get in-depth hands-on training on specific issues. More than 50 stalls will be put up by different companies related to speech and hearing exhibiting their products and recent technical advances. The vision document that will be released as part of the conference will give directions to the members of the association to enhance the clinical and research activities. The document will also emphasise on the ethics to be practised by its members and directions to establish a speech and hearing council.

For more details, visit www.ishacon.com.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Karnataka / by Special Correspondent / Mysuru – January 04th, 2018

Vocalist Radha Vishwanathan dead

Carnatic vocalist Radha Vishwanathan (83), daughter of M.S. Subbulakshmi, who accompanied the legendary queen of music for nearly 5 decades on stage died in Bengaluru last night. “My mother Radha Vishwanathan breathed her last on Tuesday night, at 11.50 p.m. She was suffering from pneumonia for the last few weeks but was mentally very active,” confirmed Radha’s son V. Shrinivasan, a businessman settled in Bengaluru.

Radha had shifted base from Chennai more than a decade ago and came down to Bengaluru to stay with her son, and continue teaching music to her grand-daughter S. Aishwarya who was taking forward her legacy. “My grandmother has taught me nearly 700 compositions and has asked me to carry on with the rich MS legacy,” said Ms. Aishwarya.

Radha was born at Gobichettipalayam in Tamil Nadu in 1934.

She is survived by her sons V. Chandrashekar and V. Shrinivasan; daughters-in-law Sikkil Mala Chandrashekar and Geetha Shrinivasan; and grand daughters S. Aishwarya and S. Saundarya.

The cremation will be at 3pm today at Bengaluru, said Mr. Shrinivasan.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Bengaluru / by Special Correspondent / Bengaluru – January 03rd, 2018