Farm Visits of FarmNest Members

Hello Mr. Subramanian,

Thanks for sharing your experience.

Can you pl. provide the route map to his farm from Yelahanka side? Do we need to take appointment to visit?

Thanks
Biju

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Yes you need to take an appointment before going there as he keeps travelling.

You can go to Doddaballapur and he will guide you from there.

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Date of visit : Tuesday, May 14, 2013
District : Tumkur
Name : Melegowda
Phone number : 9980687531
Is NF a viable method? : Yes
No. of acres : 2.5
Type of irrigation : Channel/trench
Crops :Banana, Areca nut and coconut.
Fertilizers : Nothing. Just dumps excess Gobar near the water tank and it is mixed in the water.
Sold at : Mandi
Common challenges : Water scarcity.
Average revenue/acre in lakhs : 1.5 - 2
Intercropping combinations : Turmeric, cocoa & Alsandi(cowpea)

What a warm welcome I got at his farm!! I felt more like a celebrity. Truly lived up to our culture " Attithi devo bhava".

Reached his farm at around 9am and a small chat with him about his whereabouts, he was telling me how ZBNF turned around his life. He was also doing the conventional chemical farming about 8-10 years ago, needless to say he was under tremendous loss and was burdened with lots of overheads.

He then migrated to organic farming and that gave him a bit of relief. It was during this phase that he attended one of Palekar’s workshop and that turned around his life. He has ever since never used anything but Jeevaamruth in his farm.

The moment you enter his farm you can feel the temperature dip by atleast a couple of degrees, the farm feels more like a forest and less a farm (when compared to a conventional clean looking farm). There are no particular walk ways as such, thus you truly feel you are in the woods.

He says earlier he used chop down the Banana plants after a year or two but now he showed me Banana plants that are 5 - 6 years old and he says he gets a great yield. There are at least 3-4 plants at the same place ( grown out of the same mother plant ) and he says they yield every 3-4 months ( one after the other ), thus giving him a steady flow of cash.

Also he says in a conventional farm you can expect a Yelaki Banana to give an yield of around 20kgs a year but he says he gets 40kgs a year (10kgs from each plant, 4 plants in the same place and they give him an yield every 3 months ), thus earning more and in regular intervals.

He says he has no workers in his farm, as there is no work in the field ;D. All he does is water his farm in regular intervals, that too using trench method (so no drip maintenance work too). I asked him does this not waste a lot of water, he says it doesn’t. He says he waters his farm fortnightly only and also he says in trench irrigation system water is spread evenly across the farm (unlike drip which waters only a particular plant) and thus helping him grow a lot of intercrops easily.

He has stopped using Jeevamruth on this farm as it doesn’t need it anymore (he used it only for 3-4 years). He says according to the soil test everything is in the right quantity and also the balance is being maintained by the biomass in his farm. He just dumps the excess gobar in his farm and just runs along the trench.

He says his arceanut trees yield more than his neighboring farms thus is envy to his neighbors.

The irony of the situation is his own sons deny to follow his footsteps. They both share a 10 acre land and are not following this method. He also took me around that farm and it looked quite barren as when compared to his 2.5 acres of land. He says they will soon turn around.

I was given a heavy breakfast and a basket full of fruits before he could bid goodbye to me. He assured he would be happy to help me and anyone else who wishes to walk the natural farming way!

More farm reports on the way!!!

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Hi Subramanian,

Your visits and learning are documented very aptly. It’s for sure helping people like me and those in this forum. To make the documentation more complete. Can you add a lines on the themes listed below:

  1. Process of implementation: How these farmers converted from chemical to organic/natural farming more on the process they followed for this transition.
  2. How do they monitor their fields: more on weather they have they houses built in the fields itself. if not how do they manage their crops/fruits getting robbed?
  3. Farm Automation: What type of farm automation they are using to reduce the labour dependencies.
  4. Water Handling: How are they managing the water scarcity.
  5. A few snaps of the salient features of their farms would add more value to the posting.

Regards,
agri_lover

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Hello Mr. Subramaniam.G.R!

I was waiting rather impatiently for your farm trail update. You are now the eyes and ears of many here on FN, I guess:) Great work! Did you happen to click a few pics? Do you mind sharing them?

I am an entrant into organic/natural farming. I always had a special interest on Vedic/Indian knowledge systems. So now after doing the preliminary research, I have made up my mind that there is no other way of sustainable farming other than the organic/natural way. Our family-owned land is uncultivated for more than 40 year and is situated near an ‘eri’ (although dried up) in a village near Kanchipuram. I am in the initial planning stages. I think we will begin work in a month’s time. I am counting on a lot of you here for advice and ideas:)

More in a separate introduction post.

Thanks,
bg&o.

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Dear Subramanian.g.r

Hats of you for your all efforts to do the learning by experience prior to start the farming. Your efforts are highly encouraging and guidance to all farming aspirants like us .

Could you please advise how much net income these farmers gets. Well noted that both farmers you have visited so far having small land holding and do them self. Eager to know that whether small holding is better than large holding for a successful and sustaining income generation and whether small holding faming can be source of revenue for medium life style.

If they gets reasonable income we say Rs 75K to 100K per acere net income per acer what is the design of their farm for continues availability of revenue as well as feeds for their home. Is there any particular design or intercrop/ or integrated farming model is there?

sorry to make these suggestions, but felt that these curiosity may useful to other like minded too.

rgds
mathew

What a wonderful sharing of experience. Thank you, Subramanian. Can’t wait to hear rest of the stories!

  1. Process of implementation: How these farmers converted from chemical to organic/natural farming more on the process they followed for this transition.

Ans: As almost everyone would have guessed the primary reason for the change from chemical to natural is due to the high amount of losses that they had incurred ( this holds to all the farms I have visited). Almost everyone where fed up with agriculture and thats when they heard about the ZBNF and this turned their life.

  1. How do they monitor their fields: more on weather they have they houses built in the fields itself. if not how do they manage their crops/fruits getting robbed?

Ans: Everyone invariably stays put at the farm (Only Melegowda stays at a stone throws distace from the farm, he also is planning to move into his farm). Everyone has told me one thing very strongly “You need to be there at the farm 24/7, if not you will run into all kinds of trouble”. Everyone has uniformly advised me not to entrust the job to anyone else the mantra to success in farming is " Get your hands dirty ". At least that’s what I have learnt so far.

  1. Farm Automation: What type of farm automation they are using to reduce the labour dependencies.

Ans: “Keep it simple” is the formula. 7 out of 10 use trench irrigation as its maintenance free and highly effective.
Also since they prefer to keep their farms as natural as possible, it becomes less labour intensive. The only time they need an extra pair of hands is when they are getting an annual harvest. Also they planned the harvest in such a way that they get money all round the year. Lets take the example of Melegowda his Banana plants fruit every 3 months and doesnt fruit in huge quantity so he gets the best of both worlds on he doesnt require much people to harvest and secondly gets a constant flow of money. Last but not the least his average selling is better because he sells through out the year sometimes the market value is low and sometimes it at the peak, so when you a take an average value he is on the winning side.

  1. Water Handling: How are they managing the water scarcity.

Everyone agrees that trench irrigation uses less water and the optimum use of water is made ( people who use drip also agree to this ). They mostly water their farm once in 10 or 15 days. They say that humus content in the soil is so high that it absorbs water from thin air ( we all know how that works ). Also not a single drop of water can evaporate as the soil is covered with atleast 6 inches of biomass, thus virtually sealing the ground.

  1. A few snaps of the salient features of their farms would add more value to the posting.
    Sorry sir, I didnt take my camera along as I felt the farmers get a bit more conscious and might not that relaxed ( my logic could be wrong ), also I didnt want to be distracted by using my cam on field.

Dear Mathew,

As you have already guessed small land holdings are way better that bigger ones. A simple reason is that you can manage it single handedly. All the ZBNF farmers have only small land holdings starting from 2.5 acres ( yes there are 2 brothers whom I met who had 30 acres each, but thats a exception) They know every plant, tree and every inch of their plot and thus makes it easy to manage. Also their family members are the workers so its like a family run business.

Almost everyone asked is your wife OK with this venture and if so is she ready lend you a helping hand. Since they dont have any expenses or very minimal expenses their net profit is superb.

Almost every single guy I met easily makes 1.5 lakhs per acre. Some farmers didnt reveal the exact figures we can easily calculate his income. They all have small intercrops like turmeric, ginger, alsandi ( alsandi is more like a norm, every single one grows it ). The best part is most of the if not all, grow their own grains and pulses, thus reducing their expenses.

Also everyone has banana plantation and they treat as an intercrop, as they get a quaterly income from it and their annual income comes from Coconut, arcea nut and things like that.

They all believe " Farming is a way of life " and not business, if anyone meets these farmers without an introduction you can never guess they are worth lakhs if not crores.

Even though they dont put all their focus on earning more they end up getting more ;D. None of them have a great marketing technique, as I had expected. Most of them sell it in just the Mandi, they dont expect a premium price or anything like that but still they make a good some as almost all that get is their profit. :smiley:

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Dear Subramanian

thank you very much for such inspirational revealing and sharing the same to us

This give us more encouragement and strengthen to make agriculture as culture of living,

millions of thanks

rgds
mathew

Date of visit : Tuesday, May 14, 2013
District : Tumkur
Name : Shankarappa
Phone number : 9964646491/7829743638
Is NF a viable method? : Yes
No. of acres : 8
Type of irrigation : Sprinkler
Crops : Banana, Areca nut and coconut.
Fertilizers : Bio digester.
Sold at : Mandi
Common challenges : Water scarcity.
Average revenue/acre in lakhs : 1.5 - 2
Intercropping combinations : Turmeric

I met this great personality by sheer luck or should say was a token of goodwill. After meeting Melegowda I was enroute to meet another farmer in the outskirts of Tumkur, but that gentleman insisted me that I meet Shankarappa first as he was far more experienced than him .As usual my corrupt mind said he is avoiding me and thus diverting me on to someone else >:( , but I was proven wrong :wink:.

I called Shakarappa and explained to him the reason of my call and requested him to show me around his farm, he was more than happy to guide me. After a great struggle I managed to find my way to his farm (some village names are hard to pronounce :wink:).

Like before even here I received a warm welcome and was given water to drink. The moment I gulped it down he asked “ How does it taste ?” , to be frank I didn’t take notice of it but said “ Tastes good” .
“Its rainwater” he said, but it hadn’t rained in the recent past I thought . I asked him did it rain in the recent past and he said no, then where did he get it from, he said that the rain water can be stored for over a year and is the most purest form of water.

He first showed me rainwater harvesting tank that he has prepared. It’s a 10000 litre tank with a very simple and effective water filter .Sunlight cannot enter the tank and thus the water can be stored for a longer duration, he uses this primarily for cooking and drinking.

He also showed a couple of paper cuttings, which explained that his work has been appreciated by the society ( Vijay Karnataka has written 2 articles on him ). He has devised is own simple bio digester and an innovative way to collect bio waste. He has requested the Marriage halls to dump their bio degradable waste in his farm ( he was in news for this innovative idea). He was explaining that marriage halls a tough time getting done with the waste and his idea is a win-win situation.

He said he learnt about ZBNF about 20 years ago and since then he has never ever tilled the soil. He was also a conventional farmer following the green revolution and when didn’t win this way he sort out another way. He says this method of farming is very old and he started practicing this even before Palekar to bring it out to the world.

He has made a pit of approximately 20 H* 20 w* 10D and dumps the waste from the marriage hall, bio-digester and toilet to this pit. Amazingly the pit doesn’t stink. He just fills the pit with water and lets the water to drain after 24 hours or so to another tank ( he has converted his well in to a water storage tank). Water from the borewell is also pumped into this tank, then this mixture is used to irrigate the farm. Truly an innovative idea and extremely cost effective.

He then walked me around his jungle ( it’s a mini forest ), even here the temperature dipped by a couple of degrees and was pleasant, he said this is the result of the micro climate created in his farm.

I could see quite a few turmeric plants scattered across the field, and was thinking he must be making a fortune out of it. When I enquired him about the yield he said he doesn’t reap them at all, he says he had dibbled those turmeric plants 9 years ago and never bothered reaping them. According to him it’s an antiseptic or medicine for his coconut and arceanut trees. He says “ The turmeric if not harvested after a year will rot and will dissolve in the soil and thus transferring all the medicinal values to the trees, and then automatically new turmeric tumors would start growing”. He says now the turmeric plants have not grown to its full vigor due to lack of rainfall, after a couple of rains the whole ground will be covered by turmeric plants and walking through the fields becomes almost impossible.

He says banana plants are 9 – 10 years old and not a single plant misses out to yield. He also said the same thing that Banana is an intercrop and gives him a cash flow throughout the year. There were a couple of banana plants which had fallen down, when asked why he didn’t provide a support he said its nature. He says very few plants fall as there are too many tree around and they act as a wind break, unlike conventional farms were there are only banana plants and thus the fall rate is high.

The ground was covered with a lot of creepers and needless to say a thick cover of dry leaves. He moved those leaves to show me the moisture on the ground. He says when the ground is so wet why I should water it often.

The best thing of the visit was the comparison of his farm to his neighboring farm, the farm next door was extremely clean, recently ploughed to clean it up, and the soil and trees both were totally dry( I was thinking why should a coconut farm be ploughed?, he said people do it keep it clean ). On the other hand this farm totally dirty, difficult to walk through, never ploughed but was lush green and the soil was filled with humus and was wet.

That was an eye opener.

When asked why people don’t follow this he says “ Farmers are not ready to change and are highly egoistic, thus changing them is close to impossible”.

Yes, I did called the farmer who asked me to visit Shankarappa and thanked him whole heartedly :slight_smile:.

More farm reports on the way…

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Dear Subramanian,

First of all a big thank you for the interest you are taking and the efforts/time spent on sharing your experiences with the members on this Forum! You are one of a kind and your efforts will not go waste. I envy you for not being able to join you on your visits. But you have been describing your visits verbatim, which almost takes us through the visit.

Your visits and interactions will not just encourage you to get into the act, but it is a very great learning experience. I am sure you are filing away all important learning points for your own implementation in the near future. With your systematic and thorough approach and planning, coupled with the vast knowledge gained from these visits, all your endeavors will fructify.

Keep up the posts and wish you all success and true happiness in your life.

Cheers,

John

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Dear Subramanian,

Thank you for sharing the lovely experiences in good detail. Very wise of you to visit farms and learning from their experiences.
I think this learning will allow you to start on a solid footing and lots of learned people to reach out again while you do your farming. Good luck.

One thought occurs while I read your experiences, about leveraging trench irrigation as opposed to other irrigation methods like drip/sprinkler. Assuming there is even regular spread of trenches throughout the farm, apart from collecting additional rain water even doing flood irrigation in these trenches should result in very uniform distribution of water throughout the farm with very minimal set up, maintenance and operational costs. Once there is adequate humus or mulch material this would only get even better. This seems to be a much more economical, effective and maintenance free approach even for sizable farms of 15 to 20 acres or even more.

What do you guys think? Am I missing something?

Regards,
Raj

Dear Raj,

I am not sure about the feasibility and more so the practicability of trench irrigation in bigger farms. In my view the possibility of having trench irrigation will depend upon various factors including the size of the farms, the type of soils, the terrain (even, uneven, undulating, etc), water availability and sources, availability of power etc. In trench irrigation the water flow should be controlled and managed by diversion to the required areas. This will require frequent monitoring of the flow of water. In present days with severe shortage of power, supply to the agriculture sector is normally during non-peak hours of usage, i.e. mostly at late or in the very early hours. Managing and controlling the flow of water then is almost impossible. In our farm having fruit trees in about 20 acres, it will not be possible to have trench irrigation for all the reasons mentioned above.

I think we should hear from people who have other experiences in this regard.

Cheers,

John

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Dear Friends,

In my experience a mix of conventional + modern technicians in irregation may tried . We makes Pit of 2 ft x 2 in between every 4 or two trees/crop depend on its canapoy and roots spread and this pit can be used as rain water storing/absorbing and feed pont of fertiliser. also this pit covered with bio waste like dried lief, grass…etc.

So we may just try that in summer/acute shortage of water put drip irrigation and with mix of above conventional we can reduce drip irrigation in other time. to compact power problem better make an over head tank with automatic switch cut to fill tanks in most inconvenient time to fill and later used in drip.

just a thought … !!

rgds
mathew

John,

I have seen a couple of farms which are 30 acres and they use only trench irrigation. To top it all its being maintained by a couple who are 60+ (no labors) . He says he waters 2 acres everyday, which means each acre of land is watered only twice a month.
The primary crops are coconut, arceanut and Banana.

The farm is near Tumkur and the water level in this area has gone down badly, thus they need to make the best use of the available water. This person had earlier installed drip and said its just waste of money and nothing else.

He says since the soil humus is maintained well, the water retention capacity is high and that’s what we should focus on.

I will write a complete report on my visit to his farm very soon :wink:

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Date of visit : Sunday, June 2, 2013
District : Tarikere,Shimoga(dist),Karnataka
Name : Sri.Janardhan
Phone number : Available only request
Is NF a viable method? : Yes
No. of acres : 6
Type of irrigation : Drip
Crops : Banana, Areca nut, coconut,Mango,Sapota,Mosambi,JackFruit.(and all exotic fruits in small qty)
Fertilizers : Bio digester,VermiWash
Sold at : Farmgate
Common challenges : Water scarcity.
Average revenue : Good

I read interesting article about this 68years young man. The article had a title as “One man army”. Yes. he is literally managing his farm alone. When For harvesting he depends upon buyers.
When he bought land many people discouraged him because it was 100% barren, but today there is a jungle like HD plantation is standing .
What attracted me was he has mechanised many things. Most interesting thing was waterbell. This simple device will indicate the water supply and qyaitity of water flow. The sound can be heard from a distance. No need to go and check the dripper wait there to check flow of water etc. The interval between two bells will tell how much water is flowing. If there is no bell, there is no water going.
A PVC pipe is hanged on a hinge in the centre. The pipe is blocked with conrete at the centre. A drip pipe is connected to front end of the pipe. This works like see-saw. When water is filled in the front chamber of the PVC pip it will topple and water is poured to plant. Rear end has a bolt and nut. When water is empty on frontside the rear portion bolt brings the pipe down and rests on a steel plate making a sound see picture below.

He also has fabricated push carts, one for honey collection. This has built in fan to blow bees away. He avoids blowing from mouth because saliva gets on the bee hive. all equipents related to this are on this cart. Readily available, otherwise he has to travel to and fro if he forgets any tools.
Multi purpose push cart to collect harvested fruits, and to carry brush cutter etc. He load everything on this cart after plaaning his acitvity. If there is no cart he has to travel for every tools each time, there is no place to keep inside the farm but on the ground. If the cart is there beside him, he can just put it on the cart.

He also has cart looks like stretcher. He pushes it below any tree if he wants to take a little nap in the afternoon and lay down on it.

He has two Indian Shepard dogs, very ferociouse, when he is away they safegaurd the farm. They can fight with leaperd also. He purchased it from local sheperd by paying 2K.

There are lot of things to mention, but it is worth visiting this farm.I visited I was touched by the hospitality of the couple. I was presented with rare veriety of jack fruit “Kala chandra” This is award winner veriety.








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More pictures
The compact tractor trailer can be built withing 3K. It is mounted how a plough is mounted on the rear side.
He uses trencher/scoper if there is a water logging.
A simple dog house, The dog is tied to a steel wire. the steel wire tied between two coconut trees. When it rains dogs goes inside the house. Dog never feels that he is chained, he has a bigger space to walk.








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Fantastic Collection! Thanks to Subramanian and Sri! I saw that every farmer claimed 1.5-2 lakh per annum yield per acre. It would be interesting to have a break up of the crops, yield and selling price they get. That would make the figure more transparent. It’s also heartening to note that the farmers have been quite open about using a mix of techniques.

Also, as requested by Hegde, it will be great if you an publish about the visit in advance so that we could join you wherever we can.

Thanks,
AK

I was planning to visit Sri.Shankrappa(details are in above posts) this sunday. Anybody is interested?