Agriculturist creates Black Eagle, Ganesha in paddy fields through Japanese Tambo Ato

A Pune-based mechanical engineer-turned-agriculturist Shrikant Ingalhalikar has created an 80-feet-long 'Black Eagle' on his farm using the Japanese craft of Tambo Ato, in which the fields are used as a canvas while paddy varieties are used as colour.

Ingalhalikar (72) is quite popular for his work on the flora and fauna in Sahyadri. He created the paddy art work on his farm near Pune city at Gohre Budruk village at Sinhagad road.

Over the last seven years, Ingalhalikar started creating paddy art in his field. Tambo Ato is an art in which the farmer-artist creates mammoth images of their choice by planting different coloured rice varieties in fields.

Ingalhalikar has been creating images using the Japanese Paddy Art on the 'natural canvas' since 2016. Till now, he has created images of Lord Ganesh, Black Panther, Emerald Dove, Pit Viper, Gaur and Leafbird.

Talking about the art, Ingalhalikar said, "it was a challenging task to plant paddy while standing in rain in knee-deep mud in the fields single-handedly."

He added, "My objective is to encourage people living in rural areas to take up the farming of different crops in traditional way of farming. My efforts are to preserve this art in India too "

Paddy art originated in the small town of Inakadate village in Aamori in south Japan. Rice plantations are done in the areas without using any machines. The farmers decided to celebrate 2000 years of rice cultivation. Paddy Art also known as Tambo Art, became popular in Japan in 1993.

( With inputs from ANI )