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

Cumbum Valley Farms in November

Hello Friends,

It rained heavily right through October and into the third week of November extended by a week as a result of  a depression off Kanyakumari as the Met office reports. In the third week we decided to risk planting a vegetable nursery and got caught in the depression induced rain. The nurseries survived the rain with some timely temporary covering with left over thatching material from our cowshed building. All neighbouring farms will start their nurseries only after the middle of December which is the normal duration of the North  East monsoon in these parts. Our main nurseries will also be done only at this time.

However we took advantage of the rains to plant about five hundred sticks of Gliricidia Sepium, a leguminous tree which is a nitrogen fixer as well as a prolific producer of green manure in terms of leaves which can be ploughed into the soil to increase the organic content..a new thought induced by our exploration of alternate farming methods. We have also planted about two thousand seeds of Sesbania Grandiflora in our nursery, another tree for similar purpose.All these will be planted along the borders of the farms to supplement the farm with organic material for improving the fertility of the farms.

Our background research continues to make progress and I am personally convinced now that Natural Farming is the way to go in the long term. In this mode the input costs are kept at negligible levels, the soil fertility is enhanced progressively and the yield levels keep increasing and get as good as modern methods with the difference that yields are obtained with very little input costs on the fertilizer and pesticides front. This is not Organic Farming because that involves certification and also purchase of inputs by way of organic fertilizers and organic pesticides again leading to high input costs which is what we need to get around to achieve consistent yield and profitability.

We have sold a second lot of bananas from our first crop but the price realization remains depressed with a realization of rupees five a kilo..another reason we have to keep costs low in the future so that crops remain profitable even if prices periodically swing down.

We are going to be addressing the weeding labour costs next crop cycle by substituting mulching to avoid weed growth rather than allow it to grow and then employ labour to remove them. Traditionally paddy straw was used for mulching but with combined harvesters coming into vogue straw is left in the paddy field itself. So what we are going to do is  to keep two acres of land to grow forage grass and cut and dry that and use that to cover the soil around our vegetable plants to contain weed growth.

I think our test farm will be very educative as we will be testing out a lot of concepts out here to gain first hand knowledge..regretfully technical consultant types in agriculture seemed to have only one thinking pattern which is to apply petrochemical derivative NPK..Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium in its chemical form and apply ever increasing quantities of more and more costly and poisonous pesticides to wipe out ever more resistant mutants of pests.

I have come across a video of an Indian Follower of Masanobu Fukuoka, Shri Bhaskar Save of Gujarat which I link to below for the benefit of those of you who may be interested in knowing more about this.

Our Pre Season Nursery

More later.

Rajesh

Overview of October

Hello Friends,

Monsoons hit the farms on the twenty first of the month and we completed harvesting the remaining tomatoes and brinjals. The rains come in strong bursts in the afternoons and are very heavy. We now only have our Banana plants in the farm and the vegetable fields will be re planted only in January from a nursery which will be planted in December. Transplanting is done after the seedlings are about thirty to forty days old depending on the vegetable. November and December are cold months and vegetables do not grow well in this area as per local farmers and so we wait for January. We could have tried some cold season vegetables like cabbages and cauliflower but since these are prone to heavy pest infestations we decided we would do this next season after we get a better grip on alternate pest and disease control measures.

Talking of alternative practices we have come across very promising alternatives which we have further explored by visits. Farms following these models are impressive enough to have convinced us to set apart one two acre plot for trying these practices. Farm animals are part and parcel of these forms of farming and so we decided to commission a cattle shed and we have populated this with one indigenous cow to start with;which you can see in the picture below.

For those interested to know more you could check out the video below. Masanobu Fukuoka has written a classic book called the "One Straw Revolution" and he has many followers in India and abroad.

Indian followers have innovated further and we now have farmers practicing low input farming depending primarily on farm animals, composts and green manure to grow healthier plants which withstand pest and disease attacks better just as a healthy human being is more resistant to diseases and infections they say.

Anyway we intend to try a full range of crops both vegetables, bananas and fruits in the trial two acre plot that we have set apart now for these experiments in alternate farming methodologies.

Here is our brand new cattle shed built in traditional local style and captioned to suit the the farming practice we intend to follow here. 

Sustainability of precision farming which is a form of chemical farming is strongly questioned by followers of these Natural Farming methodologies and they say that worldwide there is a trend to move away from Chemical Farming. Anyway November being a light month for farm activities we are going to be spending a lot of time researching alternatives and trying to find the best path to grow healthy marketable crops.

Bye till the next post.

Rajesh

Status in September

Hello Friends,

The August trend continued in September. Tomatoes continued to produce well, Brinjal production showed declining trend due to continued presence of root and shoot borers. The fields where Pole Beans and Musk Melon had earlier been planted had been planted with a green manure Nitrogen fixing crop. It was intended that this crop would be ploughed into the soil just before flowering to increase the fertility of the soil for the coming crop. Photographs of the green cover can be seen below. As we explore alternatives we discover that covering the ground with green cover prevents growth of weeds and acts as a mulch enriching the soil. One of the main components of labour input costs is weeding in the farming method we had been following and we are starting to see a way to cut this by at least fifty percent by adopting green mulching which we will definitely explore in the next crop cycle.

Our exercise in exploring options and alternatives for agriculture with lower input costs and natural and biological pest control methods have opened up interesting new avenues. Visits to farms and farmers and research on unconventional and newer ways of farming ( actually a continuation of ancient methods )  are throwing up interesting new options. We will incorporate all the practices we can, progressively into our farms. Sustainability of using of Chemical Fertilizers and Pesticides is one theme that we have come across repeatedly and hence an area we are studying in more depth now.

The journey continues and we hope to overcome the hiccups in the next crop cycle. The Cumbum valley gets more than sixty percent of its rains from the North East Monsoon which is expected to set in by the second or third week of October and the  next vegetable planting season will be post the monsoon showers which is expected to go on till mid November.

Rajesh