Showing posts with label organic farming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label organic farming. Show all posts

Friday 21 September 2018

Subash palekar and Spiritual Farming

Most of the people might be knowing Subash Palekar who is popular in organic farming.

The reason why the ZBNF is also known as Spiritual Farming.

Subash Palekar Words:

Nowadays chemical farming became popular. To become self reliant we allowed countries who manufactures agro chemicals  to sell in our country in the name of Green revolution.  The people  who use chemical farming thinks that the soil is not fertile and to make it fertile we need to dump some fertilizers from outside. But this is not true - says Subash Palekar

See Forests, here plants or trees grows. No need of tilling, no addition of fertilizers, insectides or irrigation. This means there is need of things from outside and nature gives all ingredients needed for the plants or trees to grow. And thus he calls ZBNF as Spiritual farming which is mainly concentrated on sustainable farming. Scientists say that Everytime the soil will not be fertile, so that there is a need to add fertilizers to the land to make it fertile. But this is also not true. Now coming to the production yield using chemical fertilizers. The yield using chemicals have decreased which was also agreed by the agronomists. says Subash Palekar.

The main five inputs like to suggest in organic farming are composting, vermi composting, biodynamics, m - solution and garbage solution. As time takes longer for the production the price is as high as five time greater than the price of chemical farming.  He also says that his five layer model is one which is inspired by Forests.

Coutesy : Times of India


Monday 10 April 2017

Infosys Software Engineer to a Farmer - Know more

Courtesy: Better India

    Shankar Kotian from Moodu-Konaje village near Moodbidre in Karnataka says “I was heading a team of 10 people in Infosys. After you reach a certain position in IT, there is not much to learn. There are no challenges. You commute for 3-4 hours everyday. You work mechanically and that’s it. I had reached a saturation point where I was not enjoying anything even though I had everything,” 



Shankar left his job in 2012 after working for Infosys for 15 years in India and abroad, and opted to become a farmer. Shankar had no ancestral land and he started by buying 2 acres of land in Moodbidre. He started planning for this day way back in 2006-07 and planted rubber plants in the first 2 acres.

After research of about 6 years, Shankar was determined to begin natural farming, which was based on the findings of PadmShri Subhash Palekar, and a dairy farm with all the modern amenities to supply hygienic milk to his consumers. In 2011, Shankar bought 8 acres of barren land near a water source in Moodu-Konaje village to start his dairy farm.

In 2012, Shankar quit his job and started building a house first in his newly acquired land to stay and start his new venture. A house was much needed as back in 2012, his farm was not connected to the main road. It was a 3 km muddy road, which made it difficult to reach the farm everyday to work. Once the house was built, he bought organic manure from nearby farmers and grew grass in his land.



Once there was enough grass, he bought the cows. He spent almost three years learning as he had no prior agricultural experience.

My knowledge was theoretical till I actually started farming and so initially there were lot of challenges,” Shankar said.

Now, Shankar has 40 cows in his dairy farm and supplies 180 litres of milk everyday to KMF – Nandini (Karnataka Co-operative Milk Producer’s Federation Ltd).

The Dairy farm designed by Shankar



The dairy farm is designed and constructed based on the industry best practices followed in western countries, but also suiting local conditions.

Some of the features are:
  1. Cubicles between animals to ensure living space for each animal
  2. Neck rail and separators in feeding alley so that a given cow eats only the ration that it is supposed to, but not that of the adjacent cow
  3. Separate sheds for cows and heifers/calves
  4. Rubber mats as bedding for cow comfort
  5. Free-stall design with plenty of space outside the shed so that cows can roam around
  6. Milking parlour system for clean and hygienic milking (in-progress)
 

Bio Gas Plant – Another source of saving and earning

                                    
   He has also set up a biogas plant of 25 cubic meter, which runs with the dung produced from these 40 cows. Shankar has made a floating drum design for the biogas, but with a twist: the drum is not immersed in the slurry, instead a layer of water keeps it afloat. This concept is more hygienic. There are separate tanks for thick slurry and washed water. The gas produced from this plant is used for cooking and heating water.

   The slurry produced from the biogas plant is very nutritious for the soil and is odorless. Shankar uses this as a fertilizer for the 25-acre land that he has bought gradually in the past few years. The slurry is also sold to the nearby areca nut farmers using a tanker and pipes. This method is less labour-intensive for buyers and the slurry is more nutrient than handling solid farm yard manure.

He has also done 5 acres Napier grass plantation to feed the cows with fresh grass. The farm landscape has a hilltop, which houses the cow shed, and the sloping land has the Napier Grass plantation. This allows the flow of slurry from cow shed to Napier Grass plantation by gravity without using electrical pumping system.

                                     shankars farm.


Tuesday 28 March 2017

Back2basics farm at Banglore by Madhusudhan

courtesy-yourstory Kiwis from New Zealand, Cattley guavas from Colombia, Chinese mulberries – exotic fruits that S. Madhusudhan was told would not survive in Bengaluru. But, they did not just survive but thrived in his organic farm in suburban Bengaluru.

b2b_delivery-van

Prior to starting up back2basics, Madhusudhan, an IIM-B alumnus, served three decades in advertising and marketing at Bharti Airtel (South India) and at Manipal Group, where he was a Senior VP of Global Marketing. Recalling the day he collapsed in the office, 55-year-old Madhusudhan says, “This incident forced me to re-evaluate my lifestyle and food habits.” While recuperating, he was advised to take up activities for rest and relaxation and found himself drawn to gardening. On a small plot he owned, he began chemical-free cultivation of greens, soon producing far more than his family could consume. He distributed the produce among friends and family, whose encouragement led him to turn to full-time farming.

Food with a bitter truth

In 2010, Madhusudhan began researching organic cultivation and studying the Indian organic produce market. He found that the level of ignorance about the source of food in India is extremely high and the inclination to find out about it is low, owing to low ticket size and repetitive, high frequency of purchase.

IMG_6

Organic retailers preyed on this, making specious claims about the exotic provenance of produce to quote premium prices. “The lettuce you eat in Bengaluru came not from Ooty or the Garhwal mountains, but most likely from a farm irrigated by one of Bengaluru’s polluted lakes,” he adds, offering an eyewitness account of carrots being washed in toxic Varthur Lake. He also learnt that organic retailers are largely distributors, not growers of the produce they sell, making them equally unaware of how and where it is grown.
In 2011, Madhusudan started back2basics farm, a unique Bengaluru-based farm-to-fork company that supplies locally grown organic food with same-day-as-harvest doorstep delivery.
Spread over 100 acres, the company practises chemical-free agriculture, selling 90 varieties of seasonal produce in four categories – fruits, vegetables, greens, exotics to clients that include large corporates, retail chains, independent organic suppliers. Its EU certified products are exported to Europe and Singapore.
lettuce

Madhusudhan is part of a small but expanding breed who’ve left successful careers to start organic agri-businesses like First Agro, Lumiere, and Akshayakalpa Farms. Organic farming received a boost with the latest budgetary allocation of Rs 412 crore and a promise to bring five lakh acres under organic farming in the next three years. State governments in Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, and Kerala have pioneered programmes promoting food self-sufficiency and safe agriculture, and a growing wave of citizens practise organic terrace farming in cities. Estimates that India’s market for organic food will grow at a CAGR of over 25–30 per cent between 2015 and 2020 are an indication that the organic movement is not a fad, but a sign of better awareness of the right to safe, healthy food.

Going where the customer is

Newly-introduced-veggie-bas

In late 2015, with growing production and a loyal clientele, all looked great for back2basics. But, on her annual visit home, Bhairavi, Madhusudhan’s daughter, realised that while it ran a successful B2B operation, there were gaps in how back2basics’ produce was reaching end consumers and thereby in the perception they had of it. Consumers were either unaware that the produce they bought came from back2basics or were doubtful about the benefits of organic produce. A graduate of the Huntsman Programme at Wharton School of Business, 25-year-old Bhairavi is the first Indian girl admitted to the programme. In January 2016, she resigned her job in private equity and joined back2basics to launch its consumer focussed operation. “Just 45 days post launch, we are fulfilling over 200 orders a day with 60 per cent repeat customers”, she gleams.
To meet this growing response, Back2Basics reorganised its delivery schedule from twice a week to six days of the week and supplies produce across Bengaluru. Currently, orders are taken only on their website, but a mobile app is in the offing.
Back2basics entered the B2C market to change the perception around organic produce, take people closer to the source of their food, and make organic produce available at a lower price point by going directly to customers. She adds,
We started the back2basics experiential farm that people can visit, see how organic farming is done, even pick and eat food off the plants.
coconut-oil

Zero-waste farming

Back2basics uses natural farm-based fertilisers such as cattle and poultry manure, neem and oilseed cakes. Each farm is a raised unit surrounded by a moat that harvests the surface runoff from irrigation or rain. This raises the water table and reduces the frequency of irrigation to once a week. A borewell recharge system ensures water supply even in the dry season and all farm waste is composted. Stems and leaves of its sweet corn crop, known to enhance milk production in cows, are donated to an organisation rearing 5,000 heads of indigenous cattle and in turn gobar slurry, the chief fertiliser in organic farming is received. “Their waste is our wealth and vice versa”, explains Madhusudhan, alluding to an ancient farming practice that gives the brand its name.
Crops are grown in batches to stagger harvest over the month and avail fresh produce daily. Those not harvested on the day of delivery remains on the plant so it does not deteriorate. This explains why back2basics operates no storage facilities or chilling plants.
However, Madhusudhan realised that it was not enough to just grow quality produce, but to ensure it reached end consumers as fresh as it was when harvested. With this, back2basics launched its own logistics operations with staff and a fleet of delivery vans.
The-back2basicsfarm
B2C and B2B orders are consolidated at the end of every day and sent to farm supervisors. Harvesting begins at 1.30 a.m. so that produce can reach the hub by dawn, where it is cleaned, sorted, segregated, and sorted client wise. It is then colour coded and loaded into GPS-enabled vans for delivery.
Controlling the supply chain from seed to last-mile delivery gives back2basics the distinctive advantage of being able to maintain uniformity and consistency in taste, colour, texture, and finish of its produce while reducing cycle time.
“Organic produce in India changes many hands, each adding their own markup, ultimately making it prohibitively expensive for the consumer, who often pays up to 200–300 per cent premium for it,” says Bhairavi. This bootstrapped venture sells its produce for a little over input cost.
Madhu
In a country with low awareness of organic farming and a highly unorganised fragmented organic food market, businesses like back2basics help in educating farmers and consumers about sustainable farming and healthy food. “We are at the cusp something wonderful,” says Madhusudhan. He quotes an Assocham study that states raising awareness could boost the growth of India's organic food market by more than 25 per cent annually to touch $1.36 billion by 2020. Back2basics occupies a unique position in this growth story with its experience with both ends of the organic food spectrum – quality production at scale and effective marketing to a growing, informed customer base.


Sunday 1 February 2015

Introduction to Organic Farming

Organic farming is a method of crop and livestock production that involves much more than choosing not to use pesticides, fertilizers, genetically modified organisms, antibiotics and growth hormones.
Organic production is a holistic system designed to optimize the productivity and fitness of diverse communities within the agro-ecosystem, including soil organisms, plants, livestock and people. The principal goal of organic production is to develop enterprises that are sustainable and harmonious with the environment.



The general principles of organic production,
  1. protect the environment, minimize soil degradation and erosion, decrease pollution, optimize biological productivity and promote a sound state of health 
  2. maintain long-term soil fertility by optimizing conditions for biological activity within the soil
  3. maintain biological diversity within the system
  4. recycle materials and resources to the greatest extent possible within the enterprise
  5. provide attentive care that promotes the health and meets the behavioural needs of livestock
  6. prepare organic products, emphasizing careful processing, and handling methods in order to maintain the organic integrity and vital qualities of the products at all stages of production
  7. rely on renewable resources in locally organized agricultural systems
yes, these are all the advntages of the Organic Farming. ABCD Farming provides as much as information about Organic Farming. 
I guess Everyone have their queries in the comments?

Here is a short intro on Risk Free Agriculture Management