Second Crop!!!

OK... This time the land increased slightly by 0.5 acres to a round 4 acres. We chose to plant the traditional seeraga samba in 0.5 acres and a sanna variety hybrid for the rest.

No Farm Yard Manure (FYM) this time before planting. We directly started the seed bed. Another important decision we made this time was to reduce Panchakavyam spray to just once after transplant and once in the seed bed. We used Amirtha Karaisal twice.

I must admit that my local handy man was very worried at the foolishness of the city dweller (oops now the Videshi or US dweller). In fact the one spray of PanchaKavyam was for his benefit as I wanted to only use Amirtha karaisal.

Limited weeding was done to satisfy local sentiments. They are just trying to save me :-) so I indulge their essential goodness. Of course Neem oil with Neem soap spray for insects (only once).

Seeraga sambha grew well confirming the sheer strength of traditional seed. But after flowering and the formation of paddy the plant became heavy and started bending down. In hind sight, I feel i should not have sprayed Panchakavyam for this. The hybrid variety also did well.

I mentioned that last time I got 16 bags of 70 to 80 kgs per acre. This time I got 1 or two bags more!!

Without allowing the paddy to get old, in our curiousity, we made a little rice out of both the varieties.

FANTASTIC!! unlike last time, both the sanna varieties did not get overcooked and it was very good.

So there you go. You know where to reach if you want good organic rice :-)

External inputs and supplements - How important they are?

The biggest issue that any neo convert in any field faces is the over zealousness. We are so much excited and convinced about the new found way/path that we actually become temporarily blind.

அளவுக்கு மிஞ்சினால் அமிர்தமும் நஞ்சு

Organic farming has become the buzz word now and some are already refining it to mean natural farming. More advanced folks are talking about wasteland regeneration and so on. The bottom line is this. No matter what we are talking about, we are referring to specific items within a larger ecological system/environment that we can potentially influence. For example, even if we talk about GM or external fertilizers to boost growth and yield etc, we have not discovered something that is fundamentally new. The fact that a sowed seed grows in soil is an act of science, god or just fact depending upon your personal philosophy. So how do we reconcile this with all our other efforts. Think of a terminally sick patient (I have seen close ones like that) and the amount of drugs they take. What is different? The fact that the recipient's system is already destroyed means that the external inputs are meaningless.

We live in a situation today where we can no longer identify a product to its original ecosystem. In the name of efficiency and yield we have introduced chemicals in almost all the processes. Due to this, we try to move the clock back to try to make everything natural by dumping even organics in plenty.  What is actually the right way?

One of my acquaintances tried spraying panchakavyam that we had prepared for our paddy crops in his chilly seed bed. In the aftermath, he asked me whether we can use panchakavyam for Chilli. I referred to my sources/books and told him that he can, however, during early stages (i.e < 20-30 days) it is not needed and after that only once if the growth is not great. Since he sprayed it very early (just a few days), apparently the whole bed died!! Now, we are not sure if the panchakavyam caused it or if it was something else. Luckily it was not a big loss. Moral of the story: Even good things are acceptable only at appropriate times and places!! In a lighter vein, my son got a particularly bad hair cut (very short) and was cribbing about it. We laughed it away by saying that he just needs a panchakavyam spray!!

Now I am beginning to think that even Panchakavyam is a little complex in the large scheme of things. So we are trying to play simple with Amirthakaraisal. So whats the ultimate goal? Make the land fertile (self sustaining) that we can hopefully minimize all external inputs. We are focussing on proper mulch(active and passive), crop rotations and minimal FYM.  If the land is fertile and the seed varieties are native (so strength is known), we can actually have a fairly predictable yield and also satisfy the larger ecological cost of farming.

I also tried playing the yield game to prove that we can try to match yields without chemical fertilizers. While that may still happen, I feel that is just incidental to the whole process. I want to reach that stage if it is possible through a gradual process even if takes a few years. But in parallel, I want to keep working on making the whole process more close to "Natural".

As I read in one of the Fukuoka articles, if you try his methods on a piece of land damaged by years of modern farming directly, you are bound to fail. He himself recommends external organic inputs for some time till the land recovers.

More on this later....

The First Crop, Some numbers and what it means....

As explained in the previous post, we were a little late in completing the acquisition formalities. So we were catching up in terms of the timeline that was broadly followed in that area. As mentioned before we decided to go for the standard paddy hybrid variety that is commonly used for the first crop before we go for the native varieties. We decided on IR 38. No significant thought process behind selecting this other than the fact that it is the predominant variety in that area.

The rains were yet to start but the beauty of the river cultivation in the delta via canals meant that I had water flowing next to my land. I decided to jump start by using Diesel pump for the initial watering(I know that is bad news for the folks who were hoping for more ecologically sensible way). But believe me that was just an exercise (POC) in the making so I wont be repeating it.

We prepared the field bed for the seeds. We treated the seeds with Half KG of Azospirrilum, Phospho bacter and Psedomonas with rice gruel and dried it. We then distributed the seeds. 10 days later we sprayed Amirtha Karaisal. (10% spray).

We were supposed to transplant in 15 days as we were also trying for SRI planting. Logistics prevented that and we had to do it between 18 and 20 days.  Folks who were helping me were not convinced about SRI. They thought that we were wasting space by planting wide:-). In particular one person said that, it does not work well for that area! (More on this later as there is some truth in it).

We prepared Panchagavyam (Approx 5KG of Cow Dung, 5 L of Cow urine, 2-3 L of Milk, Curd and 1L of Ghee, with a 3 L jaggery+water, 2-3 L of tender coconut water and 1 dozen bananas. allowed to ferment for 20 days). We sprayed a 3% solution thrice on the crops approx 25-30 days, 50-55 days, 75-80 days. In addition we sprayed neem oil with Khadi soap water twice one week after the second and third panchagavyam spray.

Finally when the initial flowering started, we did 10% spray of butter milk+tender coconut water to boost flowering and Uniformity.

We finally harvested in the 1st week of Feb.

We got about 16 large bags of paddy per acre with approx 70-80 kgs per bag. For one thing, it surprised a lot of folks NOT because it was more than other yields, but because they expected nothing. Right from the lady who was part of the planting labor group to the guy who helped in harvest, everyone thought and said "How can it grow without Marundhu (meaning chemical)?". Were they surprised?

Now for the comparitive yield with the chemical/fertilizer based farming. I realized that the numbers you hear has a lot of flavours. Some underplay the number to reduce the labor expense as it is proportional to the harvest:-). Some give a higher number (as one of acquaintance put it) because they do not want me to make fun of them as their chemical based number is potentially less than mine (by their estimates!). I had to tell them that, if at all I have learnt something in this endeavour, it is that agriculture is no laughing matter whether it is chemical based or otherwise. (First time in my life, I would be lying awake thinking what will happen when the monsoon was pouring down in the night. This is when I had nothing to loose. Think of the poor farmer who is in the same boat but with a large loan with interest!!)

So the numbers I got was between 20 bags per acre to 25 bags for chemical yield. The 25 bags seems to the case when they did not suffer a lot from the excess rains and water logging etc and was considered a good crop. If i use that as the reference then I have made 65% at the least or 80% at the max depending upon who you hear it from. My gut feel is that 60-65% is a realistic number as some of the folks lost it out because my land had better drainage to survive the flooding than theirs.

So I am now holding approx 3.5 tonnes of paddy grown without the use of any chemicals.

Few comments to close the post.

(1) I believe I can better this yield going forward due to two reasons. One, the yield gets better as the land gets used to the original way. Two, there are a few things that I can tweak to get better results.

(2) The Semi SRI that I tried actually resulted in me loosing 5-6 additional bags of paddy (approx 400-500 kgs). I did a little bit of a search/study around this. For SRI to work, the key factor is irrigation (water) control. Since this is the monsoon season, for most of the time my crops were standing in water. Though that is usually fine for paddy, it does not help SRI. The boost in SRI apparently comes when the land dries/develops cracks to let air and sunlight to the core of the crop. We then water it in the evening/night to maintain moisture. By no way, I am an expert in this. But If I am going to try this again, it will be when I have my bore well ready and during summer or post monsoon.

(3) Financing seems to be the biggest issue for the folks . One comment by a fellow farmer. "Sir - If you had been doing your organic stuff by taking finance I am sure you would have been influnced by the yield and gone chemical!! Clearly the interest burden and the need to close of loan pushes them to look the increased yield. Of course I had to tell them you do spend less as they do not need to really use even panchagavyam as the cheaper Amirtha karaisal does the job as well.

(4) Distribution -  All of them have limited choice other than go to the standard govt procurement where they get Rs 11/kg of paddy irrespective of whether it was organic or not!!

PS: My son was visualizing me sitting in our house in the village surrounded by bags of rice and holding a scale :-). I had to tell him that I am not going retail.

Farming... The first steps

Taking a detour from the previous posts, I would like to present my first attempts at farming in two steps. First is the acquisition of the land and the knowledge (didnt want to use the word knowledge acquisition :-) The second post would cover the actual process and steps that we went through with the quantified results.

As the picture illustrates the land in question is about 15 minutes brisk walk from the Tiruvali temple. Through all the well wishers in Tiruvali, I was able to acquire the land (currently 4 acres). you can refer to the 11.202967,79.774336 coordinates in google maps.

Right from the beginning I was blessed with an excellent handy man (actually a well qualified handy man with an MPhil) from Tiruvali. He has been behind all my endevours there right from entering the village, temple, festivals and now farming. Without him, nothing would have been possible.

I had been reading about organic farming for the past few years with significant triggers/inputs from my brother in law. Still when I got the land, I was a little apprehensive despite my best intentions and expectations. So we reached out to experts. There was one who was willing to come all the way to Tiruvali to inspect the land and give his comments. (I know I have not been mentioning names of all my acquaintances, well wishers and helpers. Will do in a separate entry once I get all their approvals).

Broadly his comments:

(1) You are blessed!

(2) This is a fertile land

(3) More importantly, it is near lake (actually a water body of cauvery rivulet which subsequently flows to the sea near Poompuhar). There are two small canals which flow thru two sides of my land. One is an inflow canal and other is the drainage canal for the water body. This means that I have a good water channel for irrigation. the drainage canal will remove excess water during monsoon. YOU CANNOT ASK FOR MORE!

(4) His inspection of the land was in later summer and so we spotted a few big dead crabs in the land. His comment was that, it is good to see crabs as they furrow and increase aeration of the land and it is generally an indication of the fertility of the soil.

(5) He was also very impressed with the overall structure of the village

(6) He enquired about the local farming practices and gave some recommendations (a) To get Farmyard manure to spread initially as the land had been fallow for some time (b) to start with paddy as it is the most common crop there (3) to not to use native varieties immediately (though that is the end goal) and use what is typically used for starters. He actually preferred native varieties but did not want too many variables as we are just starting.

Onto actual work now!

We got a lot of farm yard manure (cow dung, stalk, Cowurine, Sheep dung etc) and spread it across the entire field. We ploughed it lightly just to mix the manure. Ideally if we had started a little early we would have planted Daincha (Thakkai Poondu) or Sun Hemp (sannappu) and ploughed it down after 45 days as green manure. (Hopefully next year!)

Now on to the actual "Organic farming"!

(Before I close, how did I relate the farming experience with what was in the previous two posts? By the below mentioned pasuram of Thirutherriambalam, when I actually saw small crabs running along the water stream during irrigation subsequently)