"We Must Learn Sustainable Agriculture Practices from Our Ancient Farmers", says Karnataka Central University VC

According to Battu Satyanarayana, Vice-Chancellor of Central University of Karnataka (CUK), agriculture in ancient India was advanced, with traditional methods of cultivation, and cattle were the backbone of every farmer, which became part of culture.

Inaugurating a two-day workshop on "Ancient India: Agriculture and Animal Domestication" recently organized by the university's Department of History and Archaeology, he stated that domesticated dogs, cats, and other animals demonstrated coexistence and became part of the culture and tradition.

"Today, heavy pesticides and chemical fertilizers have severely harmed farmland and crops. We must learn from our forefathers in India, who grew a variety of crops with organic manure, such as cow dung-based fertilizers. "History will help us give future directions to modern society in this way," he said. Earlier, Arjun R, the workshop's coordinator, said in an introductory speech that agriculture and animal domestication were part of human society's earliest economy.

"Agricultural development in India began in the Neolithic period. We grew barley, wheat, millet, and rice. Carbonized grain recovered from archaeological sites has been thoroughly investigated. South Indian farmers relied primarily on millets such as brown top millet (Brachiaria ramose), foxtail millet, little millet (Panicum sumatrense), Kodo millet (Paspalum scrobiculatum), mung (Vignaradiata), black gramme (Vigna mungo), Horse gramme (Macrotyloma uniflorum), pearl millet (Pennisetum ( Cajanus cajan). Cattle herders and pastoral communities were very strong in the South Indian Neolithic and Iron Age periods (3200 BCE-300 CE), particularly in northeastern Karnataka, where there are over 500 such sites," he said.

Resource people spoke on a variety of topics during the two-day conference. Professor K.P. Rao of the University of Hyderabad explained the origins of agricultural practices in the Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh regions, as well as presenting archaeobotanical evidence from excavated sites.

Dr. Arati Deshpande Mukherjee of the Deccan College Post Graduate and Research Institute in Pune concentrated on animal genetic studies and isotope methods analysis on wild and domesticated cattle (Bosindicus) in the Indus Valley civilization in northwestern India.

During the Sangam Age in the Kaveri river valley, Professor V. Selvakumar of Tamil University, Thanjavur, emphasized the various professional communities such as farming communities and craft-making communities.

Tinai (foxtail millet) cultivation, craft production, and pastoralism, he claims, helped lay the groundwork for internal and external trade in South India. He recalled herding communities' lifeways in Budihal, Kalaburagi district, during archaeological excavations in the 1990s. The two-day workshop was attended by faculty and students from the Department of History and Archaeology.