Ganesh Kudale

Leader, Shaper, Grower

Nurturing liveability

Pune is recognised as one of India’s centres of education and culture. Located near the Mutha river, it has been ranked as ‘India’s most liveable city’ on several occasions. Although best known for its high-tech industrial sector, it’s also home to the Shreenath Mhaskoba, a sugar mill making production more sustainable for the environment and farmers. Alongside maximising their own environmental performance, Shreenath Mhaskoba also supports farmers’ education, training, and social development through courses, fairs, and sponsorship.

Local sugarcane grower Ganesh Kudale works closely with Shreenath Mhaskoba, providing both 4200 tonnes of sugarcane to the mill and also promoting sustainable agriculture to other farmers.

Growing up farming

Growing up in a agricultural family, Ganesh developed a passion for innovation and is continuously searching for new interventions and approaches to improve farmers’ results. On his own 40 acre farm, he follows Sustainable Agronomical Practices (SAP) for sugarcane growing. This includes using more efficient single bud eye seeds for planting, which require significantly less seed tonnage per hectare and also allow improved row-to-row and plant-to-plant space management, coupled with adopting drip irrigation.

Ganesh is now also a proud member of the award-winning Shashwat Mithaas Project, a joint initiative of UPL and Shreenath Mhaskoba to promote sustainable sugarcane production by encouraging other farmers to use these SAPs.

Sustainable savings

Alongside these SAPs, Ganesh is working with UPL’s inputs to improve sustainably having been first impressed by our Zeba water-saving soil treatment input in 2017. He now uses a customised ProNutiva package incorporating soil health and water conservation products like Copio and Zeba; Provax, Reno, Electron, and Pilatus seed treatments; Saaf, Cuprofix, and Shenzi crop protection inputs; and crop health products like Foltron, Opteine, and Gainexa.

Working with ProNutiva and his own innovative sustainability approaches has increased his annual crop yields by 33% – nearly 1,000 tonnes – and his income by over 153%. Perhaps even more importantly, this combined approach has enabled him to make water usage savings of almost 50%, reduce his urea usage by 25% limiting GHG emissions, and minimising nutrient loss in his farm’s precious soils.

A passion for change

As he looks at the state of sustainable farming, Ganesh knows the major challenge is raising awareness. But with Ganesh’s passion and commitment, we’re confident that by working with him both on his farm and through the Shashwat Mithaas Project that challenge will be overcome.