No tillage Farming - Dec 2018 on 2018-11-10
The labor intensive practice of cultivation by marginalized farmers, dependency on unpredictable monsoon, over usage of water and indiscriminate application of off-the-shelf fertilizers and pesticides have been glaring issues of rural areas in West Bengal.
Our insight to the issue revealed an important fact, that is, the high quality of land in West Bengal has the potential to generate good income even to very small land holders if they adopt agriculture as an enterprise based on modern knowledge.
Therefore, size of the plot remaining constant, the input cost of cultivation needs to be minimized in order to make agriculture profitable. Also, the farmer has to ensure that the soil, being the only capital asset for agriculture enterprise, does not lose its productive health.
Sayambharataa has been deeply inspired by the concept of “zero budget spiritual farming’ developed by Mr. Subhash Palekar.
We experimented with Mr. Palekar’s research findings on paddy cultivation in our demonstrative farm of one acre in Birbhum. Our approach was primarily based on the philosophy, that all nutrients needed for growth and production of a plant are available around the root zone. There is symbiotic process in the nature, which needs to be understood and effectively used. Hence, we followed preparations of in-house natural fertilizers and pesticides.
In our effort to minimize input cost, we adopted the following measures:
1) Labour cost was brought down remarkable by using drum seeders.
(No transplantation was required. Hence, a farmer can complete sowing one acre land in almost two days time, single handedly)
We also experimented with “no-tillage” farming, which did not require any plough or transplant , hence minimum labor.
2) Effective use of water as the most expensive resource in dry arid areas of Birbhum. The common concept of flooding paddy fields with water was completely omitted. We found that just moistening the paddy fields was enough for healthy growth of the plants. Water was used at times to de-weed the fields.
Another very important finding was the importance of mulching, i.e. covering the entire soil surface with dry leaves/straws so as to reduce evaporation during dry months. We realized that in order to restore water content within the soil and to improve its condition progressively, our one acre of land needs to be protected throughout the year from scorching heat in Birbhum. Hence, we started making use of every single dry leaf in our farm. Apart from protection, the dry leaves add to the humus of the soil.
3) Complete omission of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. We applied an indigenous concoction of cow dung, cow urine, gram flour and jaggery as the only fertilizer , named as Jiwamrita by Mr. Palekar. This not only enhanced the symbiotic process between microbes , plants and soil nutrients but also reduced the attack of pests considerably. As pesticides, we primarily used leaves from Neem trees along with some other.
The overall paddy cultivation in Birbhum this year has been adversely affected by the poor monsoon. But to our surprise, our farm yield is almost double of what it could have produced in normal monsoon years.
We wish to go ahead with the concept of spiritual farming in multi-layer vegetable cultivation throughout the year.