Most of the farmers in any developing country like India are illiterate but conscious of the factors & impacts on crop productivity and sustainability. But they do not have modern education although their cropping pattern is encouraging for soil productivity. How we can help them with simple methods and tools?
Village agro-technology for illiterate farmers and farming.
May be drainage and infiltration rate of water (2.5 inches per hour suppose to be fertile and healthy soils); the bio-pores also a good indicator of fertile soils beside sufficient earthworm population.
Experienced soil scientists or agronomists who have learned to map soils in your area may be the best hope for providing indicators. Tools and indicators can vary, but your country may have mapped soil groups or soil series, and if data were put into GIS, you might produce maps of soil suitability and operability for farmers. At the field level, if they were shown tools such as Munsell Soil Color Chart, and how sand, sitl and clay feel in their hands, they might come to learn the basics. Highly experienced soil mappers of a country or landscape learn to read vegetation types, topographic position, and signs of disturbance that may help them estimate, even before taking soil sample.
Knowing which plant species are most suited to the climate, soils, moisture, nutrient levels is helpful. Some plants like legumes help to fix nitrogen, while other plants may use a high amount of nutrients, and must be rotated with other crops to maintain fertility.
If there are obvious mistakes being made, help is warranted, however whether by trial or error, word of mouth, or customes, local farmers may have found or developed ideas that work for them and their families and communities. But obviously, if the land becomes barren, non or marginally productive, eroded or gullied or other problems, they may need help in understanding why and if there are options to improve or help reverse damage. If some practice works for the farmers, even though inefficient to modern farming operations, it may be hard to know when to suggest change or to let them continue.
Compactness of soil as a function of plough in field, presence or absence of lime ,etc could be added in the parameters highlighted by our colleagues in their responses...
Dr.Senapati,FAO Rome is promoting farmer field School approach for educating farmers and improving productivity on their farms in several developing countries.The manuals developed ,several in number, by them and their experience may help you.I am giving here reference to one example.
www.fao.org/ag/ca/ca-publications/farmer_field_school_approach.pdf
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