Bah Ende Suting, 66 year old custodian farmer of Samanong, a village in West Jaintia Hills, did an experiment on pests that feed on cultivated crops such as mustard leaves, beans, cauliflower, potatoes and many more. He has been conducting this experiment for over 3 years and continues to practice till date.
Samanong is an active partner community of the NESFAS ongoing project – Empowering Indigenous Communities through Agroecology Learning Circles (ALCs) for Resilient, Integrated and Innovative Natural Resource Management, which is supported by MBMA and funded by the World Bank.
The main technique developed and implemented by Bah Ende is only with the use of water from fermented tobacco leaf (um sla duma), garlic and cow urine and by spraying the mixed ingredients all over the field to repel pests.
The purpose of this experiment was to get rid of pests and on the other hand to protect and safeguard his crops from getting infected by pests through the use of traditional methods, eventually avoiding the use of chemical pesticides. He witnessed first hand that this method works well.
Bah Ende shared, “This method is considered an easy and inexpensive solution for controlling and killing pests and therefore, I urge others to start practicing this method instead of chemical pesticides which normally damage the crops and soil health”.
