Pests in a Pandemic? India’s Plant Doctors Will See You Online Now
When Victor Mary’s husband decided to travel abroad for work, he left her a plot of land to cultivate in southern India and a new mobile phone that would help them stay in touch, writes Anuradha Nagaraj at Reuters. Fresh to farming, Mary found herself struggling after India’s coronavirus lockdown began in March, unsure of how to fight the pests attacking her paddy and groundnut crops.
Initially she called her husband in Singapore to ask for advice. But then she realized she could use her phone to dial into an “e-plant clinic”, where farmers and experts meet online to discuss crop pests and blight.
“I was using the phone to only make WhatsApp calls to my husband and complain about things,” Mary told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from her home in the Pudukkottai district of Tamil Nadu state. “Now I use it to call the plant doctors instead and they help me instantly. I don’t have to wait for my husband to finish his work shift,” she said.
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