Know how a dropout came up with the idea of ‘Fertiliser Gun’ to reduce labour

Potkuri Mahesh is a young farmer from Ergatla Mandal in Nizamabad district, who puts together a simple device to dispense fertilisers on standing crops. He calls it the ‘Fertilizer Gun’.

In these days of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a major labour shortage in the district, and dispensing fertilisers, particularly for maize, is a labour-intensive exercise and expensive too. Generally, adding fertilisers to crops is the most tedious task, but Mahesh has made easy with the help of ‘Fertilizer Gun’.

In a media interaction, Mahesh said that nowadays, most of the farming activities are mechanised. However, there are some jobs like dispensing fertilisers which still needs to be done manually since it has to be added at the root of the crop. Following the nationwide lockdown, the labour demand has gone high and so are their wages. Most farmers in the district are facing problems since maize crop needs fertilisers to be added at least thrice, and each time it costs Rs 800 per acre only for labour.

According to a report by Telengana Today, Mahesh who is just 21 years old is a dropout after completing his school final. However, he has a very sharp mind that is constantly looking for simple solutions to seemingly difficult tasks. For the ‘fertilizer gun’, he only used locally available material that included PVC plastic bags, PVC pipes, dummy caps, iron clips and some solvent gum to put together his device, totally costing just Rs 320.

Mahesh says the device is adjustable based on crop area and requirement of fertiliser. He has used it on his maize crop successfully, much to the amazement of farmers in adjacent fields. He already has a “Monkey Gun” to his credit.

The monkey gun is used to scare away, obviously, monkeys besides wild dogs and birds from agriculture fields. Several farmers have bought the monkey gun, again put together with locally available material, at Rs 500 per piece.