Weekend Farmer - Season 2

With a fairly successful Season-I, I was fairly confident of paddy plantation in season II. I was ready to shrug off my amateur experiments and sort of roll up my sleeves and get some knowledge on how to do this better.

Over the last season, I had researched on new techniques for rice production and wanted to use the same in my field. I even got a very good grade of paddy for sowing. From the 1.5 acres last season, I decided to scale it up to ~5 acres.

But alas, plans are only as good as they are executed. And execution risks in agriculture are much more than what we city folks can imagine. First I had to face a labor that did not understand the different technique that I wanted to transplant the crop. So I ended up paying more than twice for them to take up the assignment. The weather played truant that encouraged growth of weeds. After 3 weeks, my field had weeds taller than paddy. Labor was unavailable for de-weeding the field and I decided to leave the 3.5 acres and concentrate only on 1.5 acres. Thus a straight loss of 70% in production. In the end, I got paddy of about 200 kg and rice of 75 kg.

During this time, I also tried setting up a small vermicompost unit. Procured special earthworms that are voracious eaters of organic waste matter, from the agricultural department .

Vermicompost Pit

Ginger, that I had planted in the end of season I, also seemed to be going the paddy way. Initially not a single one sprouted for the first month. However with the advent of rains, the sprouting started. In hindsight I realised that I had given less water to ginger in the initial days. By the 9^th month after planting, ginger was looking good. I had initially planted around 3 kgs of ginger and I was able to harvest around 22 Kgs of ginger. Not a bad yield for a first timer.

The vegetable production in season II was not too different from season I. I added few more vegetables like French beans, tomato to the vegetable portfolio. After the failure of karela in season I, the yield in season II more than compensated for that failure.

By the time season II ended, The sole labour that was helping me execute my plans left. This impacted the work. (And now all that hype about attrition in the corporate world started to make sense;-) )

Now that I had 2 years of farming experience under my belt, labour issues got me thinking about how I could utilise my knowledge of technology and improve yield as well as reduce dependence on manual labour.

Birth of the weekend Farmer

When I was growing up, we learnt in school that India is an agrarian economy with 70% of the people involved in agriculture. To a city-bred lad like me, the closest we came to agriculture was the vegetable market or, if you were lucky, a trip to one’s ‘native place’ which could be in a village with farms. I never understood (or maybe didn’tcare) where the atta that went into my chapattis came from, where the toor dal that went into the dal at home came from or how did a cucumber plant look like.

Cut to then life in the 21^st century; I had checked all the boxes that went into making a ‘good boy’ for a middle-class Indian family – an engineering degree topped up with an MBA and a cushy corporate job with an MNC. And while spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations could answer questions about the best investments and when to enter/exit the market,I realised I still didn’t have the answer to ‘where does the dudhi that goes into dudhi halwa come from?’

It began as a weekend activity. It was cool to do something other than work/sleep/watch movies over the weekend ;). I had access to the most critical resource i.e land, not very far from Mumbai. I was willing to carry out some “experiments” over the weekend. And thus was born the weekend farmer in July 2010.

I was a complete novice to agriculture. And looked like I wasn’t getting any help from beginners’ luck;  I was already late for the current season of crop. I didn’t want to start the experiment with an ‘out of the box’ idea, so chose to start with rice (since that was the common crop taken during rains).

Initially I took advice from the local experts. They had divided opinions. “We own numerous acres of land here, but we have never attempted cultivating it. It is no longer remunerative “. While there might have been merit in their advice, frankly what did I have to lose., I just wanted to get a first hand experience of what it feels like to be a farmer ; the piece of land indulged me!

Paddy Crop after transplanting

With a lot of hiccups and numerous hours of phone co-ordination, I managed to plant around 1.5 acres of paddy. In October, I harvested around 400 kgs of paddy, which post dehusking and cleaning was about 160 kgs. My first Win!- I had produced enough rice to consume and sell.. err was I getting somewhere?;-)

Paddy getting harvested

Harvested Paddy

I was super charged now; my initial success was just the kind of kickstart I needed. I thought of experimenting with vegetables and surprise my mom with home grown carrots for home made gajar ka halwa perhaps. In November 2010, I planted Palak, Methi, Dudhi, Karela, Cucumber, Brinjal etc. as a first attempt. By early January, the first produce of cucumber was available. I had a mixed luck here, with not a single Karela seed sprouting while Dudhi and Cucumber were fairly successful.

The problem with produce like vegetables is the shelf life; it has to be consumed quickly. Given the experimentative nature of my idea, I wanted to move to  a crop  that had a long shelf life post harvest. So I chose Ginger. Ginger requires soil that does not hold water and is typically a 9 -11 month long crop. With heavy rains in this part, Planting ginger was indeed a challenge for a novice like me. But I persisted by constructing a shed and planting ginger  on the slopes to ensure water-logging does not happen.

Ginger, vegetables, rice- I was getting somewhere ; closer to a  getting a complete meal on the table through my home grown produce; perhaps not a pipe dream anymore