This ZP member engages villagers to make seed balls, nurture trees

Watching a television programme on seed ball innovation, this gram panchyat member got motivated to experiment the same in her panchayat and has made her dream fulfill. Bannikuppe Village Gram Panchayat Member Pushpa Amarnath has took an initiative to increase the green cover in Hunsur Taluk and has engaged villagers to make seed balls.  



44 gram panchayats in Hunsur taluk have been selected under go green initiative and each gram panchayat will be distributed with 10,000 seed balls. Self help groups, NGOs, students have been roped in to make seed balls. The same will be distributed to interested farmers, and initiative has been taken to nurture the seed balls at vacant government lands, lake bunds, burial grounds, dry lands, hill areas.



The programme has been taken under Social Forestry and Department of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj. Making use of the provision under NREGA, she has brought the women under the programme and they will be paid dailywage for making seed balls and planting trees.



With cows urine and cow dung needed to prepare the seed ball, she has asked all the households rearing cows to collect cow urine by placing a drum and dung. Such collected cow dung, urine for nearly 10 days, was used to make 12,000 seed balls on Saturday.  



NSS, Scouts and Guides cadets, education institution eco club students have also been roped in to the programme, to make youngsters aware of environment conservations. Pushpa who has aims to make five lakh seed balls, with the help of other gram panchayat members is involving women in making seed balls daily for two hours. Villagers to collect cow urine, cow dung, whereas the red soil and seeds will be provided by forest department. 



‘To dig pit, plant a tree lot of energy, time and money is spent. Whereas, the cost for making every seed ball is just meager Rs 1. Also this innovative idea is very easy and economically viable. Am hopeful atleast 70 per cent saplings grow and  maintained for three years it will create a big difference in the nature. With decline in rainfall and deforestation we are encountering several problems and planting tress will be the solution for all the environmental imbalance. Thus, increasing green cover is need of the hour to fight against increasing temperature, drought and other environmental issues,’ she added. 



“Seed ball is a novel method of planting trees. We had heard about it, but am very happy, am experiencing. With Hunsur is dry land and declared drought hit, hope planting trees will change the scenario in next five years. If the same things adopted in another taluk panchayats it could bring a big change in increasing gree cover over the years,” added Prakash, who is planning to place 50 seed balls in his agriculture field.


Pushapa is planning to document the process and upload them in social media, so that interested gram panchayats can adopt this simple method and improve the green cover. About 13 varieties of trees, including fruit trees seeds will be made. The seeds include, Neem, Nerale, Honge, Tamarind Tree, Rain Tree, Jackfruit, Agase seed, jatropha, bamboo two varities, Castor seeds, etc.