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The 32nd edition of the annual Festival of Plants & Flowers at the SFX School, Siolim, is on till August 26, 2024. It is open to the public and there is no entry fee.
Reputed nurseries are selling plants, manure and other garden inputs, and there is a vast array of plants brought by students for the competitions and display.
This higher secondary school is the alma mater of Sampatti Dhargalkar (nee Parsekar), now the Zonal Agriculture Officer of Bardez, and Elijah de Souza, who has carved a niche for himself in sustainable agricultural practices in the village of Anjuna in North Goa.
It has inspired students from other schools, which have been invited to participate in the festival, through projects and other competitions. This year’s theme is ‘Plant a tree, keep Goa green’.
The projects are intended to motivate the students and their teachers as well as parents to plant trees in their own localities.
The plant festival has very unlikely roots. Noted Goan cartoonist, Alexyz, lives next door to the SFX School. He had been a part of the ‘Rustic Farm’ experiment in Sattari with activist Dr Claude Alvares and others before deciding to become a teacher and then a cartoonist.
Alexyz, and his journalist friend, Joel D’Souza, were impressed by the ‘Plant Show’ of the Botanical Society of Goa, held at Panjim in February 1992, and decided to hold one in Siolim.
Alexyz convinced the PTA of SFX school, Siolim, to host an exhibition of potted plants that they could collect on returnable basis from the residents of Siolim. It is a long story that appears in the books, published as a fundraiser for the events, over the last thirty two years.
On August 9, 2024, the Green Heritage Eco Club of SFX School organised its curtain raiser with demonstrations on oyster mushroom cultivation, conducted by Deepashree Naik from the Goa College of Agriculture, located at Ela Farm, Old Goa.
The preparation of seed bombs was demonstrated by Seby Diogo Pinto and Kenneth Lobo.
This year, the sub-theme is ‘Microgreens in our food’. It is about the very nutritious and fresh tender vegetables used for salads.
The SFX plant festival has always been theme-based, starting with home gardening in 1992, moving on to medicinal plants and home remedies with adulsa, tulsi, aloe vera, turmeric, ginger, garlic and other spices in 1993.
The SFX plant festival has always been theme-based, starting with home gardening in 1992, moving on to medicinal plants and home remedies with adulsa, tulsi, aloe vera, turmeric, ginger, garlic and other spices in 1993, and on to kitchen gardening in 1994 introducing ‘kitchen garden kits’ to schools and laying the seeds for agriculture education in Goa.
The themes have covered coconut, kokum, jackfruit, wild vegetables, soils, impact of mining, conservation of biodiversity, vertical gardening, aquaponics, hydroponics, pulses, spices and millets.
The plant festival created the impetus to start agriculture education in Goa. Vocational courses in horticulture were introduced in the higher secondary level in 1998.
By 2000, there was a demand for upward mobility for these students and an extension centre for diploma courses of the YCMOU-Nashik was started in Mapusa. This was replaced by a centre at Savoi Verem in Ponda taluka in 2014.
Now, Goa has its own college of agriculture. The homegrown agriculture graduates are powering agriculture in the next generation.