I am very new to farming and planned to start farming on my 4 acres of land situated at 50 km from Indore. I have planned to start it in partnership with cousin brother who is already a farmer.I will be able to provide my time at Saturday and Sunday. Attached is my soil test report and crop detail which we produced in last 3 three season.There is no water availability right now it is fully dependent on rain water but i can arrange it.
1.Can some one will suggest me which crop should i select to start farming?
Generally farmer do farming of crops like cotton,soybean,chickpeas,maize,pulses,vegetables
2.What action i should take in improving my soil quality
I am more interested in organic way.
Don’t worry about the current state of the soil. You can improve easily with several ways. If you can get hold of pond silt you can dump 25 tractors of the same in one acre to improve the same. There are several other ways as well.
From your post, I see that you are only doing short-term crops like cotton, soybean, chickpeas, maize, pulses, vegetables. I suggest you to keep one acre for short-term crops and allocate the other 3 acres for tree based crops.
Due to my financial restriction i can afford to have tree crops as it would provide me output after 1- 2 years but as i am new to this field and also want to learn new things can you please suggest how tree crop will be more beneficial to me than short term crop also can you please suggest me few tree crops.
In the long run, trees are beneficial as you will not have to do much work except for harvesting. The crops you are current having in mind are all dependent on too much labour and labour is going to be a problem in the long run both in terms of availability as well as remuneration.
You can keep doing whatever you are doing until the shadow of the trees makes it difficult to grow the vegetables etc. So, in a sense you are not losing anything financially.
Please grow the tree crops which are in demand in your locality or the target place of marketing.
I think your crop selection should be driven by the market in your area and labour availability.
You could take standard yields of the crops and estimate possible returns, with the understanding that past returns are not a guarantee of current returns.
Vegetables like ladies’ finger are labour intensive and unless you can manage them day to day including picking fruit each day, it is going to be difficult.
From among your list, soybean, chickpea and pulses fall under legumes, which have the ability to fix Nitrogen in soil. Of course, soil quality is an outcome of many other methodologies you need to apply.
If you are thinking of trees, you could plan for intercropping with seasonals.
I discussed with few people and found that no one grow any specific tree crops in our area and there is no any such type of specific market for tree crops but i have seen few guava,mango,pomegranate,lemon,papaya forms in our area but that too at small scale .
Could you please suggest which will be most suitable option for me?
What is the nearest (big) market to your farm? Please go there and see what people sell and buy. That should help you to decide the crops. You have to keep in mind or see what grows in your area.
