A Video Report Of Our Progress In The Last Twelve Months

Hello Friends,

When your trial Natural Farm is establishing itself there is not much one can report at short frequencies. Nothing we do will make the plants grow faster than they are genetically coded to do. One has to wait patiently  till they grow and produce and see how the out turn is and what kind of pests have attacked during the various phases of their life cycles. These too vary as we have mixed annuals and perennials with different maturing time frames. Well we are happy to report that our Natural Farm has overcome most issues without the assistance of any chemical fertilizers or pesticides and have started producing. We have used preventive herbal sprays with a concoction of leaf extracts and cow urine and so on for managing pests. For fertilizers we have used farm generated micro organic mixtures using Jaggery, powdered lentils, cow urine and cow dung for accelerating decomposition of green material grown in situ to cover the soil and create conducive micro climates. See the video below and judge for yourself how things have turned out when we went back to Nature. You will observe that we have followed a No Till - No Weeding policy but plants have grown healthily among the lush weed growth. That is our ground cover preventing the scorching sun from killing our friendly earth worms and fungi and other micro organisms in our soil. The more of them we have the more healthy our soils will be and hence the more healthy our plants will become. It has been a long wait of over twelve months to see how things turn out and seeing the results we are now confident and ready to expand the area of cultivation and move on to further development.

A New Beginning

Bye for now.

Rajesh

An Endorsement for Farming Naturally

 Post Prepared in June 2012 and Published in July 2013

Hello Friends,

It was a pleasant surprise to have friends calling in to say that Aamir Khan's Satyamev Jayate had covered the importance of Natural Farming recently.Here is the episode for anyone who may have missed the original broadcast.

Happy viewing,
Rajesh

Reporting Moderate Success and Gaining Confidence

 Post written in June 2012 published in July 2013.

 

Hello Friends,

It has been a while since I have been able to make a post primarily as we were engaged round the clock literally in sourcing and planting on our new model following Natural Agricultural Practices. This meant we had to source open pollinated seeds and plant and fertilize them with Natural Fertilizers and observe and manage pest attacks with Natural Pesticides meaning extracts of leaves and  natural substances.

It is only  when one sets out to source seeds that one realizes the extent of monopolistic control that the multinational agri business houses have over agriculture in India. Open pollinated seeds are scarce to obtain and only branded hybrid seeds are available and seeds are sold and dispensed from retail shops. Gone are the days when farmers saved seeds from one crop for sowing during the next season as hybrid seeds do not produce seeds which can germinate in the next generation.

Glad to report that  we started roll out of our new model from around March after the cool season and now plant a mixture of multiple crops maturing in multiple time frames in each of our farm units. We now plant crops which start maturing from 90 days onwards all the way to five years. The planned design covers short term, medium term and long term crops all grown with very low input costs and with open pollinated seeds collected from many different places in Kerala, Tamilnadu, Karnataka and .Maharashtra.

We did have our difficult phases trying to manage diseases with natural and biological means but we believe that our crops have now stabilized and soon should start producing Naturally Grown Fresh Produce which we can offer at prices on par with the market to consumers. We have just started harvesting some shallots which were inter cropped with our bananas and they have turned out fairly well I must say. Shallots mature in sixty days from planting and have to be harvested before the rains which should reach our part of the Country any time now.

Short term crop areas are small now but will be expanded soon and we are planning to make fresh and naturally grown vegetables available directly to consumers from our farms starting about the end of August 2012.We have a larger area now dedicated to an annual crop ie bananas and are also in the process of planting the long term orchard layouts consisting of a mixture of Mangoes and Chikkus along with inter crops and fruit trees like custard apples, pomegranates and so on.

We will be reporting progress more often from now as our model has finally stabilized on a low input multi tier, poly culture which provides a low input cost model with diversification of market price fluctuation risk across multiple produce coming to fruit round the year.

Bye till the next post.

Rajesh

Course Corrections and Going Forward

Hello Friends,

Have spent the last two days at our farms after the unexpected Mullaperiyar interlude. Work is progressing with seedling nurseries and so on but at a lower pace compared to where we were last year. There will be a little discomfort in spending intensive time at the farms till the final verdict is out towards end February and how this would be taken in and taken up by the two parties. I expect it will take till the end of March to build up tempo to the level we were operating at the period prior to this issue.

In the light of this experience and of the last crop season with intensive cultivation of short term crops with precision  farming technology; we would like to make certain course corrections which I would outline here for your perusal. With precision farming we could raise good quantities but with a very high input cost and very high use of pesticides for plant protection fighting continuous pest infestation problems. We also invariably ran into lower price realizations when quantity production was brought to market as often the crops from all fields were similar during a particular period leading to a glut. We could not differentiate our produce with others in a marketing sense as our produce also had pesticide residue as did others.

To overcome the situations we have experienced and taking a long term view for development I would like to suggest that we change our direction gradually towards a multiple crops with low input cost and Natural Farming  approach which we have been able to fine tune as a result of the continuous study we have been doing for alternate methodologies for growing crops. The reasoning behind this is that with multiple crops grown on each farm the possibilities of hitting glut situations are lower and with low input cost even a lower price realization will not impair profitability. With Natural Produce we have an opportunity to differentiate our produce and possibly take it direct to consumers on a no pesticide or chemical fertilizer Natural Produce platform.

The second course direction change that we would like to bring about is to balance the farm produce with short term, medium term and long term crops so that in the event of any disruption at any time in the future for whatever reason only the short term crop would be effected with medium term and long term crops remaining through to give stability. What is proposed is that twenty five percent of the individual farms be reserved for short term vegetable crops, another twenty five percent be deployed with along term orchard crops with inter cropping of vegetables during the first three to four years while the fruit crops mature. The balance fifty percent will grow an annual crop like bananas but with multiple varieties in the same field instead of the G 9 alone that we do now. Additionally the banana spacing would be altered to grow inter crops also between the banana rows. The fifty percent on which the annual crops are grown can be converted after two seasons either into short term vegetable crops or into long term orchard  model depending on our experience and potential returns from these two models.

In essence what is planned is to do 25 % short term vegetables with yields from 90 days of planting, 25 % long term fruit trees which will start yielding only in 3 to 4 years time and 50 % 1 year crops with the one year crops area planned for flexible deployment long term on basis of experience of next two years. All farming would be basis mixed cropping as opposed to mono cropping for better price realizations and on Natural Farming principles for differentiation in the market.

On the marketing front price realization on G 9 bananas which was expected to be at Rs 8 per Kilo level could not be achieved due to a combination of glut from Andhra crops when our first harvest came to market and the disruption referred to when the second and third harvests were taken. On the banana crops we have now we plan to ween them to Natural Farming low input cost model so that we may make a surplus even if the price realization drops to Rs 5 a kilo  ie below what we realized on our first crop.

The almost two months forced break was spent personally in Kerala planning the setting up of a sales outlet and the location for the first of these has been finalized. The model is going to be that of a Farmers Market selling only Natural Produce and to achieve regular supplies and full range of vegetables; sourcing arrangements have been done with farms in Kerala also as also captive areas for consistent supplies identified and tied up in both the plains as also high altitudes. The retail location is just off M.G.Road near Woodlands for those familiar with Ernakulam with a target for launch in April by which time we would like our farm produce to be ready from the  next round of planting. The produce from the Cumbum Farms will be placed at the outlets with the Cumbum Fresh brand if there is no negative consumer perception on this label come April.
The outlet will retail Naturally grown FRUITS and VEGETABLES only and will be organized on a Farmers Market model where multiple farmers produce can be displayed.

Would like to close this rather long post hoping that the disruptions are now behind us and we can gradually build up our work tempo back to earlier levels by March and that we will be able to overcome the past shortcomings with the new architecture proposed.

Bye till  next post.
Rajesh 

Back to Work at Cumbum Valley

Hello Friends,

Cumbum Valley is returning to normal. Bus services between Cumbum and Kumili have restarted today albeit with fewer services....Our Supervisors have started coming to the fields from Saturday last and today we harvested some Banana and did a sale. Our labour will start coming in from tomorrow to do some weeding and transplanting work. We will be proceeding cautiously and under the radar and increasing the tempo to the level of  the earlier days only over the course of next two to three weeks.

Wishing everyone a Happy and Prosperous 2012.

Rajesh

Mullaperiyar and Work - an Interim Update

Hello Friends,

We have not had any untoward incidents at our farms and we have been able to continue with our routine maintenance work uninterrupted till date.We have a worker from the local village itself who has been attending to work right through this difficult time. Ours may be the only Keralite farm in the area where maintenance could be looked after.

Today we are discussing re commencement of work with the support of neighbouring farmers and some of the local village people and we hope to start with some transplanting operations from our trial nurseries soon. Our Supervisors who are locals as I mentioned earlier are doing the talking to get things moving again.

Cumbum Valley and Theni District has not come back to normalcy and there are periodic demonstrations and protests taking place. Appeals made by respective Chief Ministers for calm yesterday is expected to have some effect as per feed back from local people and we await to see how the situation progresses. I think the waters will remain choppy for some more time but feel we will be able to navigate out of the situation safely over the coming few weeks.

Thanks
Rajesh

Mullaperiyar Reverberations

Hello Friends,

Presumably all of you are seeing the media coverage of the impact of the agitations on this issue in the Cumbum Valley area. We have not had any problems at our farms as of date and things seem to be cooling off now. However many farms owned by Keralites have suffered damages on infrastructure, equipments and standing crops.

Some of the steps we had taken right from the beginning may have stood to our advantage. We employ  hundred percent local employees including supervisors. We have maintained good relationships with our neighbouring farms and have worked together with them for common causes.We have carried with us a very influential local person who helped us consolidate the holdings and still work closely with him and so on and so forth.

Work on all farms are at a standstill since last Sunday which is the last time we could visit the farm as traffic between the states still remains disrupted. Local activists discourage local workers from going to and working on Keralite farms and with the workers not being able to cross the border to work on Cardamom estates in Kerala there is also a developing distress which should all favour a quick resolution of the local interstate movement and work related issues hopefully.

Work is light at this period because of winter months. Our early season nursery is starting to become ready for replanting and we have started doing this in a small way yesterday with one local worker who is on our rolls. However we need to be planting our main nurseries within the next two weeks to be able to plant for the next cropping season by mid January and we are hoping that issues would get sorted out by then.

Will keep you posted through this site more frequently in December till such time as things return to normalcy. We believe our investments  can pass through this phase safely and continue with our plans albeit by arranging for more local  participation in managing the farms and more transfer of knowledge to local supervisors for implementation on the field.

We are adjusting suitably and proactively and will keep updating progress.

Thank you
Rajesh