Bhubaneswar: Mohit Niranjan, who is cycling across the country with a mission to create awareness about the ways to prevent soil degradation or extinction, received a warm welcome at Krushi Bhawan, Bhubaneswar, on Tuesday in the presence of Agriculture & Farmers’ Empowerment Minister Ranendra Pratap Swain, Principal Secretary Dr. Arabinda Kumar Padhee and other officials of the Department.
Minister Swain felicitated Mohit with an Uttariya. Additionally, since this year is being celebrated as the International Year of Millets, Mohit was also gifted a Millet basket prepared by Odisha Millets Mission.
Congratulating Mohit for his commitment to the soil, Swain said that his initiative would surely inspire others. While protecting soil health is a major challenge of today, there is a need to create awareness in this regard at every level of the society. He stated that the entire ecosystem depends on the good health of the soil and the Odisha Government is also taking steps to ensure soil fertility and sustainability.
Principal Secretary Padhee said that good soil health leads to good plant health and subsequently to good human health. When humanity is healthy, the planet is healthy. He also informed that the Agriculture Department is soon going to start a Soil Health Mission to enrich Odisha’s soil with desired quantum of soil organic carbons. Padhee also urged everyone to take steps towards protecting soil health.
Though being son of a farmer, Mohit had been brought up in a city life away from the struggles his father had faced. But during the Covid-induced lockdown he returned to his native place Lalitpur in Uttar Pradesh and worked for a brief period in the fields. He came to know about the real situation of farmers and decided to help them.
As no one listened to him and every farmer kept sending their children to cities to get a job, he was concerned as who will take up farming after his father’s generation. His other concern was the degradation of soil due to the use of fertilizers. He understood the need to increase organic content in the soil and got an opportunity to spread awareness about it through the Save Soil movement launched by Sadhguru.
After completing his graduation in English Literature, Mohit started his cycle journey on 16th November 2022 from Lalitpur. He plans to cover 30,000 kilometres covering all states and prominent places to unite and aware people about soil extinction. He is also conducting programs in schools and colleges, meeting influencers, Government officials, politicians, collaborating with the NGOs, Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs and doing whatever possible to reach as many people as he can.
His primary goal is to urge the government to implement mandatory policies requiring landowners to increase the utilization of organic content in their land by 3 to 6 percent. He is of the opinion that if people don’t save the soil, farmers will turn towards forests and cut them down. This will lead to climate change, causing people to migrate to big cities, and there is a possibility of civil war leading to human extinction.
Mohit plans to cover Kanyakumari, Bay of Bengal, North-East, Himalayan region, Desert, and the Arabian Sea and culminate his journey at Isha Yoga Center, Coimbatore.
