Ranchi, April 28: Birsa Agriculture University may be coming up with new varieties of crops but there are few takers for them in the farming community.

About five-km from BAU, Kishan Singh, a farmer of Omra village, sticks to the traditional mode of farming. When asked about new farming techniques and improved varieties of seeds and he is clueless. “These new techniques are too complicated. I prefer what has been in practice for all these years.”

Though the agriculture department and the Birsa Agriculture University develop new varieties of seeds after a lot of research and investing lakhs of rupees, ground reality is different.

A university official said, “Our scientists are developing one variety after another but farmers are not adopting them. After a variety is launched, the university starts a project and invites farmers to learn the technology. But as a soon as the project is over, they revert to the old farming techniques.”

Another official said, “Sometime ago, the university developed a rice variety called IR-36 to IR 64. While some of the farmers liked the 36 and 38 varieties, the rest of them were rejected by farmers. Later, the farmers stopped using the remaining varieties as well. It took a lot of time for the BAU to develop these varieties. The university had developed another variety of paddy, named Birsa Dhan-100 to 110. But it was a shock when farmers rejected the entire thing,” he said.

According to sources, the BAU was optimistic about this variety of paddy. It took one-and-a-half years for the university scientists to develop the variety.

The scientists are in a fix over the issue. “We are not able to figure out the problem. We are developing new varieties for farmers. After a new variety is developed, farmers are taught how to use it. We supply them with the seeds for some time. But once it stops, the whole thing comes to a standstill,” a scientist said.

Scientists added that the adaptability of farmers was poor and that they received a low response from them. “We taught the farmers about inter-cropping in which they could sow more than one crop in the same field. All went well for sometime but the whole thing stopped all of a sudden,” a scientist said.

Farmers said the new technologies were too complicated, What they wanted was “farmer-friendly” technology.

“We told the BAU officials and the agriculture department. But they do not seem to understand. We do not have the resources to implement these difficult and complex techniques. We want something cost-effective,” a farmer said.

According to one of them, “It is true that scientists are coming up with lot of new varieties for us. But what they suggest is so complicated that it is difficult to adapt. These new varieties are costly and we cannot afford it.”

Farmers said they wanted technologies, which they could use easily.