Raggi cultivation - some experiments

I tried Raggi in one small portion of the paddy field in December 2011. I had bought the seeds from Sahaja Samridha, Bangalore.

Palani (my farm worker) and myself prepared the field for the nursery using the spade, the field was having enough moisture content, and put the seeds and with spade the land was worked so that seeds gets into the soil.

The transplanting area was cut with Honda brush cutter and a small area was mulched with dried grass, seedlings were transplanted after 3 weeks. It reasonably established well through grass and grains were there, but couldn't harvest since it was completely eaten by peacock, it took around 3 months to mature. But the experiment gave me confidence in raggi cultivation and also it was watered once in 10 days. Even though field is not having water, plant didn't show any water stress. Even though I didn't get any raggi for harvesting, experiment gave me great insights into raggi growing and I will be doing it in more large scale in the next season. Also it looks like cultivating millets are much easier than rice, so my option for crop rotation after rice is clear, as part of this experiment.


Here are some photos..

Visit to Jayadevan's farm (Alanellur, Mannarkkad, Palakkad)

Organic farming in Kerala is promoted heavily by an organization called 'Jaiva Karshaka Samithy'. Jaiva Karshaka Samithy has district bodys and they have monthly meeting in that district typically in one of the organic farm. As part of the meeting, there will be discussions about the farm and issues faced by farmers. This month's Palakkad Jaiva Karshaka Samithy's meeting was held in Thrikkadiry Jayadevan's farm in Alanellur. Alanellur is 10KMs from Mannarkkad.

Jayadevan is full time into farming and has more than 20 acres of farm where rubber is the main cultivation. He cultivates completely in organic methods since last 6 years. He also has coconut, arecanut, nutmeg and rice field of about 1.8 acres. It looks like he is the only farmer who is still doing rice in that area. Rubber is the main source of income for him and the next higher part is from
70 fully grown up nutmeg trees which gives around 4 lakhs per year. He has 5 cows and a biogas unit and the slurry is pumped to different parts of the farm. He used to bring two loads of chicken manure from Tamilnadu and apply it every where. Some of his coconut trees were lost due to some disease called 'Thanjavoor Vattam' and the reason was finally diagnosed to chicken manure which typically has hormones in it. He has drip irrigation in most part of the farm. He has one area where there is coconut and with cover crop as mucuna which is typically used in rubber plantations. He mulches this area with coconut leaves and make trenches and bury husks in that. This area does not have watering facility but still the trees are looking really healthy and yield is very good. The mucuna was still green in the summer and Tony chettan (legal cell - One earth one life - magazine of Jaiva Karshaka Samithy) was pointing out that they have roots 2-3 feets deep and sucks water and make the area dry. This happens with all the trees which are green in the summer ..one tree called 'Ung' belongs to this category. Mucuna once established is difficult to remove and he is looking for options to remove this. He does not get labour to harvest coconuts and some one was pointing out that the yield may be less in non-harvested fields and the trees where tender coconuts are harvested there is more yield, may be the tree does not spend much of its energy if it is early harvested.

He grows three different varieties of paddy in his 1.8 acres of field so that each mature in different time. He prefers it this way since it is difficult to get labour and hence most of the work is done with couple of women and men laborers. The paddy field has become risen over the years because of the eroded soil comes with water and gets deposited. He cultivates just once in a year and rest of the time, field is left fallow. He grows daincha and once it is grown up, he puddles and leaves it with water for 1 month and then transplants. He gets around 3 tons of paddy, and he uses HYVs Jyothi, Uma and Aiswarya. There was some grass in between the rice and this does not affect him, he does not weed because of labor shortage and some time they press the weeds down with foots. Some body asked what he does with 'Chazhi' (Rice Sapper) which drains the milk at milk stage. He says chazhi does not survive since his is the only rice crop and also because of just one time cultivation of rice. Another opinion was that in fields cultivated with organic methods this pest does not attack.

One Narayanan master (86 years - retired school teacher) was commenting that the rubber plantations are green in the summer and hence they drain water and make the area dry. Some people were of opinion that rubber plantains should be avoided, but Tony chettan had the opinion that rubber plantations are done in monoculture way and people first cut all the trees from rubber plantations before planting. This method is not correct, rather we should start planting trees in between the rubber trees so that mono culture is avoided. Coconut is not giving any money for the farmer and farmers live in the society and they need money, and hence rubber is attractive. Also at some point Tony chettan was saying, glyricedia fixes excess nitrogen and plants grow more and they are affected by disease, so planting more glyricedia is not advised rather 'Uzhunnundi' also should be planted which has broad leaves and better to cut its branches also so that organic carbon content increases in the soil. Cow dung should not be considered as a manure, it has just 2% nitrogen but it has lot of microbes and hence if applied along with mulch, lot of elements becomes available to plants.

Tony chettan also talked about his water conservation in the farm. He walks through his farm when it rains and where ever water flows he makes a pit and allows water to sink in. This way no water is allowed to flow out from the farm.

Upland rice cultivation in Kerala - Some information

While I was searching for upland rice information, could get some information scattered in the web, so thought of putting some information together. I haven't started upland rice cultivation yet, but planning to start it in the monsoon season 2012.

There are two types rice cultivation - Upland rice and Wetland rice. Most commonly seen rice cultivation is  Wetland rice where the paddy fields will be flooded with water and there will be always standing water in the field. Newly developed SRI (System of Rice Intensification) method require no standing water, but still the land has to be moist all the time, and field will be muddy all the time. Upland rice cultivation is done on fields where there is no provision to make standing water available. Even after rain, the water will be drained immediately. Upland rice is normally cultivated in the space available in coconut farms and other upland farm area near the houses.

While talking to some elders they told that upland rice was cultivated in Kerala during the start of monsoon, and it was a common practice. They plow the land and apply some cattle manure and then put seeds at the start of monsoon, typically by around May 15th. The seeds germinate and there is enough water from the rain in the month of June,July,August..and harvest is in August end or in September. Since there is no standing water weeds will be there, and some weeding may have to be done. But the seeds used for upland are special types which grows tall (4-4.5ft) and wild and hence weeds is not much of a problem. Also these seeds are drought tolerant so they are not much affected even with less rain, but the yield of these traditional seeds are less.

Some of the traditional varieties used are - Parambuvattan, Karuthamodan, Karanavara, Kalladiaryan etc...The yield of these are - Parambuvattan - 456Kg/Ha, Karuthamodan - 1632Kg/Ha, Karanavra - 2532Kg/Ha, Kalladiaryan - 2160Kg/Ha.

There are HYVs developed for upland rice and some of these are with their yields - Vaisak (3768Kg/Ha), Swarna Prabha (3900Kg/Ha) and Aiswarya ( 3840 kg/ha). But these HYVs are supposed to require higher input for their optimum production, may be more chemical fertilizers while traditional varieties are supposed to be low inputs.

Here is the source of these information
http://paddymission.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=94&Itemid=98&lang=en
Some videos about upland rice cultivation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rICL5IQWBl4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eTVXuNyoA0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JCMKdf3Rnc&feature=related

Subash Palekar's zero budget no-till rice farming

This is some information about Zero budget farming after reading Subash Palekar's books and also interacting with farmers. I have also given a brief about zero budget no-till rice farming given in Subash Palekar's "Techniques of Spiritual farming". I don't practice zero budget farming, but follow natural farming as advocated by Masanobu Fukuoka.

Zero budget farming advocated by Subash Palekar from Maharashtra is popular in different states of India. This method basically talks about mulching using agriculture waste generated from farm, mixed cropping with stressing importance of leguminous crops and also applying a set of preparations based on cow dung, urine of traditional Indian cow. This is called as Zero budget since all the required things can be cultivated at farm itself and hence no inputs has to be brought from outside.

The most popular preparation is Jeewamritha which has cow dung, cow urine, pulse powder, jaggery and a handful of soil. Jeewamritha is not talked as a fertiliser rather it contains lot of microbes and hence decomposition of the mulch becomes faster and earth worm activity becomes more and land becomes fertile. People who has used Jeewamritha tells that visible changes in the earth worms can be seen within a week itself. Also one good thing is that 1 local cow is enough for 30 acres of land. The calculation goes like this, Jeewamritha has to be applied once in a month per acre and local cow gives 10Kgs of cowdung per day which is sufficient for an acre in a day. So within a month all 30 acres can be completed once and cycle repeats. I was impressed with this scheme, since 1 cow per 30 acre of land seems to be a sustainable model. After seeing some farms I felt that if the cows increases in the farm, the fertility will reduce since no grass will be left for mulching.

Subash Palekar's has written three books on Zero budget farming..Principles of Zero budget farming, Philosophy of Zero budget farming and Techniques of zero budget farming. The book Techniques of zero budget farming gives a clear description of how all mixed cropping can be done and a description of how various crops are cultivated using Zero budget farming philosophy.

I had visited some zero budget farms - Krishnappa Dasappa Gowda in Mysore, Manoj in Kanjikode, Palakkad, Chandrasekhar, Vithinaserry, Palakkad and Dr. Raju , Karivannur, Thrissur.

Subash Palekar also talks about zero budget no-till paddy farming in his book - Techniques of spiritual farming. This method goes like this..

When the paddy crop is standing and 15 days before harvest, broadcast Bijamritha treated seeds of pulses like beans,cow pea, green gram etc..Some seeds will fall on the paddy but eventually they also will end up in ground. There will be sufficient water for these pulses to germinate.Since paddy is already matured the leaves will allow more sunlight to reach the pulses which will be sufficient for them to germinate and come up.

During harvesting the seedlings of the pulses will be crushed, but they will again standup. The same thing was described in One straw revolution, but the seedlings in that case are rice seedling..typically the pulse seedlings may break if they are crushed by the foots of the harvesters, so not completely convinced if it will work. Now apply Jeewamritha periodically.

Now on the bunds of the fields he asks to plant glyricedia, pegion pea, turmeric, ginger, cow pea etc..and use the waste from all these for mulching the field later. Glyrecedia provides mulching material at each 21 days.

In March, pulses will be matured, harvest and return all the remains to the field. Also mulch with straw immediately after harvesting the pulses. This may be to avoid hardening of soil with sun light and wind...Apply Jeewamritha over this...March, April and May the soil will be covered with straw.. In the first week of May treat the paddy seeds with Beejamritha. Make holes in the mulch at the distance of 9 inches to 1.5 feet and dibble the seeds into this and add some soil over to it using sickle. Pre-monsoon rain starts by may end and apply Jeewamritha and keep applying Jeewamritha once in 15 days. And again before harvesting the paddy sow the pulses and cycle continues.

This method looks to be impressive, now would like to see some one really practicing it.

Traditional rice seed savers

As part of my search for traditional rice seeds for natural farming, came across some interesting people who knows the importance of traditional rice seeds and try to conserve them. It is interesting to note that there are many traditional varieties which can yields of 2-3 tonnes per acre and can out perform HYVs, so this suggest that if traditional seed varieties are developed properly, then the green revolution itself was not required !!!

1. Prakash Raghuvamshi 

Raghuvamshi is a 50 years old farmer from UP. He began developing a living seed bank on 3 acres of land and chose wheat, paddy, arhar and moong seeds for their high yields, disease resistance and ability to adapt to sudden climate changes.He has developed 80 varieties of wheat, 25 varieties of paddy, 10 varieties of arhar, besides moong, peas, mustard, papaya, ladiesfinger and vegetable varieties. All of their seeds can be saved as they are open pollinated seeds.His paddy varieties yield 25-30 quintals per acre and his wheat varieties 18-20 quintals per acre. For a traditional paddy yield of 25-30 quintals is extremely good yield, I have heard that the best High yielding variety gives around  8 tons per hectre which is 3.2 tons per acre.

See the following links -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GKK1sCs0ps
http://infochangeindia.org/agenda/agricultural-revival/kudrat-karishma-and-other-living-seeds.html 

2. Dr. Debal Deb

Dr.Debal Deb is an ecologist who has been conserving traditional rice varieties of eastern India single handedly for the past 15 years on his farm BASUDHA in the Bankura district of West Bengal.

He is preserving around 700 heirloom varieties and has been giving seeds free to farmers. According to him, there are some varieties which grows as tall as 18ft and one variety which needs just one rain. Also there are many varieties which can outperform the HYVs.

Please see the links..

www.cintdis.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7WiKL953sY

3. Natbar Sarangi

Natbar Sarangi is a retired teacher who preserves 310 rice accessions in his two hectare farm, located in Narisco village in Khurda district of Orissa. He claims that 50 of the varieties that he cultivates give an yield of 15 to 23 quintals per acre. 

http://devinder-sharma.blogspot.in/2009/04/indigenous-rice-gene-bank.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsRLG9HGte0

4. Ghani Khan

Ghani Khan is from Karnataka and saves 146 traditional varieties and also many mango varieties. The 20 acres of land had been gifted to his forefathers by Tipu Sultan, as they had served in his army, which he had then inherited.

http://www.ecowalkthetalk.com/blog/2011/10/13/reviving-the-lost-legacy/
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/article928993.ece

5. Boregowda

Boregowda is from Mandya district of Karnataka. Boregowda cultivates 70 different traditional varieties.
The traditional varieties Coimbatore Sanna and Doddibatha gives him 2.7 - 3 tonnes per acre. Coimbatore Sanna is drought tollerant and fine quality rice. This yield is quite remarkable..

http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/saving-rice
http://www.hindu.com/2010/04/05/stories/2010040560510400.htm

6. Srinivasa moorthy

Srinivasa moorthy is from Karntaka and saves 300 traditional rice varieties

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/article2743518.ece

7. Cheruvayal Raman

Cheruvayal Raman is a tribal farmer from Wayanad,Kerala who preserves many seed varieties. Here is a video about him

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UNEmoes1JE

8. Jai Prakash

Jai Prakash Singh from Varanasi, Uttarpradesh preserves 460 types of paddy,120 types of wheat, 40 kinds of arhar dal and three types of mustard.

Here are some links about him.

http://itsorganic.in/organic/preserving-native-seeds-india/
https://in.news.yahoo.com/why-jp-singh-is-every-indian-farmer-s-best-friend-063823627.html
http://www.nif.org.in/awards/awardprofile-details.php?profile_id=18&page=2&award_function_id=-1&st_id=24
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/patna/Farmers-need-primacy-in-breeding-seeds/articleshow/7690169.cms
 

Indigenous seeds

In my childhood days we had around 50 cents (0.5 acre) land near my house and we used to cultivate cow pea, colocasia (chembu), tapioca, ginger, turmeric etc..I used to really love the taste of cow pea fry and colocasia curry. But now a days, while eating cow pea and colocasia, never used to get that taste, so used to wonder what is the reason. But as I got into farming, slowly realised that those tasty varieties existed earlier but they have disappeared after introduction of more productive varieties. While looking for seeds of cow pea, you can see lot of varieties which grows big, gives good yield, but none can give the taste of those old indigenous varieties. Same thing happened to colocasia since what we used to cultivate was round ones but never could see those variety later. The agriculture universities/institutions have come up and they make newer varieties which can give good yields and other peculiar characteristics like long cow peas etc. Also since it is a profession for them, they might be interested in experiments and naming the varieties after them, so the motive has become different. It looks like once these seeds became available people changed the habit of keeping their own seeds but bought the seeds from agriculture institutions. One more thing is that the hybrid seeds can not be used again and again since their characteristics changes and they will go back to the characteristics of their original parents. Only a few people keep the traditional seeds, especially the tribal people who does not have easy access to seeds from agriculture institutions. Those local indigenous seeds have been existent for many years, but their disappearance was quick. Surprisingly there are not much information available about those varieties in the internet. I expected to find lot of information about the rice varieties in the net, but later found that there are not much.

During my rice cultivation in natural farming method, I came to know that grass is a real problem while getting into natural farming. But after growing legume in the grass and if the organic content increases, grass seems to be less of a problem, but it takes time. As part of this, I tried to grow sunhemp in the field which has thick grass growing in it. I broadcasted sunhemp seeds and cut the grass, and sunhemp sprouted well and their growth was quite interesting to me. They grew quite tall giving no chance for the grass to take over. I was thinking, if I had rice which grows with the vigor of sunhemp it should be easy for me. But later I learnt that there are many indigenous varieties of rice which grows tall and grass is not a threat to them. Originally rice was tall variety, but as part of green revolution, short varieties were introduced which gave good yield with more inputs and pesticides. Straw was much less in this, but farmers were carried away by the yield. In my case, I was more concerned about inputs and competition with grass, so came to know that indigenous rice seeds is the answer. Fukuoka san had developed 3 strains of happy hill rice which had wild strains in it. I don't know what was the height of this rice, but it looked at least it should be 4 feet high.

So I think natural farmers should start using indigenous seeds and also try to adapt them for local conditions. Basically while selecting the seeds, we should select the good seeds which came up well in the planting season. Over a period of time, these seeds will be adjusted to local conditions and will do the best. It looks like this is how indigenous seeds were developed.

The article below gives information about Fukuoka-Bonfils method of wheat cultivation in Europe. This article mentions importance of selecting traditional long variety of wheat which has vigorous growth.

http://www.agriculturesnetwork.org/magazines/global/monocultures-towards-sustainability/how-to-grow-winter-wheat-the-fukuoka-bonfils

Visit to Chandran master's farm

News about Chandran master and about his farm came in a local daily and was impressive to read it. Later father-in-law mentioned that he had met him around 10 years back and he was having his number, while daily didn't give that. Called him and visited his farm in the next morning. It is west vemballur, near Asmabi college, Kodungallur, Kerala. He asked us to come morning at 9AM so that all the cows will be there in one place, afterwards they will be moved to different parts of the farm for grazing.

He is 72 years old and a very simple man and says his wife and himself lives on 30/- per day.He was a teacher earlier and worked in Kerala and Oman. He had visited Malasia, Singapoore, Thailand - seeking a solution for the coconut virus called 'Mandari'  He has also been to Illinois, USA.

It is impressive to see the cows there - all Indian breeds. There is Vechur,Gir (from Gujarat),Kasargod dwarf,  Kankayam (from Tamil nadu), one from tribal people of chimmani estate, one from Andhra which is supposed to be Krishna's cow (This looked like the cow seen in pictures of Krishna) etc..Kasargod dwarf is about 80cms tall and gives 2.5 litres of milk. These local varieties are small cows slightly higher than goats and does not required much food and easy to manage. The Gir looks really big, but they are quite loving type.

He does not give the cows any artificial foods, pellets etc..He allows them to graze in the farm and gives water from rice cooking etc.. He also has a canadian pigmy goat, local tamilnadu variety dog, different varies of hen etc..

He says, he spends around 15,000/- per month on animals..but it looks like return is less. Urine of these cows are said to be very costly, but obviously there are no marketing channels and gets wasted.

He has some kind of flower throughout the farm and that looks to be the most income generating stuff. These flowers are sent to five star hotels, marriages etc..in season.


He has around 12 ponds in the farm and has fishes in all of them. He does not eat non-vegetarian and when some guests come some are used. He showed one bunch of banana and it was not very big, but it reflected the same size of one seen in my farm.

Coconut trees in this farm is affected by some virus disease and hence not yielding fruits. There is enough mulch at the base of each coconut tree, but still the disease exists. To me it looked like the number of cows exceeds the acreage and hence fertility of the soil is lost. One thing is that he does not mention about productivity, profit etc..he is a natural farmer in true sense. He mentioned that he follows Fukuoka method after the coconut trees were affected, but problem is not solved even after 20 years. Even though there is sufficient mulch at the base of the trees, in other places grass and mulch is missing. P.Sainath was supposed to visit him for some documentary and it looks like he is known every where because of his cows.

During conversation he also mentioned that Jeewamritha should be applied only when the land is wet, otherwise it won't have much effect. Showed him some photos of Fukuoka farm and he wanted that in a CD along with videos, promised to give him in the next visit.

A nice blog and video about Chandran Master, thanks to Jason Taylor

http://cargocollective.com/thesourceblog/The-Keralan-cowboy

1st -December-2014

Met Chandran mash today when he came to meet me to collect Fukuoka videos. He came by catching bus and then walking tomy wife house. Apparently he had visited this house, when my father-in-law was keeping some Jamunapari goats.

Right now he has sold all other varieties of cows and just keeps 22 vechur cows. He also cultivates 6 acres of paddy (pokkali) with fish and he says it is extremely profitable and not much labour and no fertilizers are required.

He is in good spirit and found it very interesting to listen to his talks.