I am writing down my experience of growing food
on the lap of nature and through this write-up I want to thank mother nature for
making me an ecological farmer respecting the interdependence in this biosphere.
This realization of my freedom as a farmer lies on the fact that I choose to
grow those food crops where I have the right to keep my own seeds for the next
season. Keeping my own seeds is my freedom. It allows me to conserve and grow
my local food wisdom. I believe that my religion is to grow immunity building
healthy food on my farmland for a strong humanity. Wherever we take birth,
Nature provides us food. And our communities have the right to eat that food
which God has given us which I term as the Healthy Healing Food. The local food
bestows on me the responsibility of a future healer of mankind as they will
keep us strong and prevent from sickness. I foresee farmers growing local crops
as future doctors. In this stage of life on the planet, when every entity is
struggling to lead a healthy life, food will be the most important factor to
keep us healthy.
We understand that food is one of the big
businesses in the world today. Nobody wants to sleep without food. Everything
is marketed starting from the seeds to the feeds. Farmers are one of the major stakeholders
of this big food industry. But what is surprising is that ‘no farmer’s child
wants to be a farmer’. Nobody dreams to make their kids into farmers not
even those students who are studying agriculture in the Universities. My
exposure to farming started in the beautiful mountains of Arunachal Pradesh in
my childhood. I loved to be in the beautiful home garden we had in a beautiful
place called Dirang as my father was posted there. I could feel the happiness
on my father’s face when he worked in the garden every morning or evening. That
was his best relaxing moments in an otherwise very hectic and tensed
administrator’s job. I remember those purple colored grape vines, the peaches,
the apples, the mustard leaves, the chillis, the beans and many more. I saw him
keeping some fruits on the plant to mature fully and keep them as seeds for the
next season. Another remembrance of my childhood is my visit to my grandmother
at our native village of Jorhat in my vacations. Walking around the paddy
fields, feeling the freshness of the paddy fields with the sound of the people
ploughing with the bullocks in the morning, having local breakfast on the field
with them are memories to be cherished. That local breakfast made out of rice
flour and local banana and a desi cow milk, the lunch with herbs and vegetables
growing abundantly in the homestead garden and also in and around the village,
the dinner with the country chicken meat or egg from the backyard poultry etc.
were the food which I call now Healthy Healing Food. I don’t remember my father
or grandmother applying fertilizers or using any insecticides in the crops. At
this moment I think back about the bamboo bin in my granny’s paddy store house
where seeds of paddy for the next season were stored with dry neem leaves. I
understand now that was her freedom of not depending on the market to buy seeds
and external inputs required to grow them. Keeping our own seeds is our
freedom. Now, after pursuing an
agricultural course in the agricultural college, and serving for a Company
dealing with agriculture, and then becoming a farmer, I miss those memories of
my childhood experiences of agriculture which never featured on my formal
learning of agriculture.
When we eat our food, it brings in us the
feeling of inter-relationship that human beings have. That food is a collective
effort of so many factors. The person who keeps the seeds, sow them and make
saplings, plough the soil to plant them, care them, harvest them, process them,
transport them and cook them. The sun that helps the plant to make its own food
and also nurtures the microbes on the soil to feed the plants, the rain, the
water, the wind, the soil microbes, the ladybug beetle which controls insects,
the spider, the earthworm, the ant aerating the soil, the cow and the bullock
and so many entities are connected together to give us that food we eat. We
must value this whole ecosystem of mutual co-existence to lead a healthy life
in a healthy planet. This is the basis of my model of farming where I strongly
believe that nature nurtures our future. Thus, unlearning my agricultural books
which I believe supports more of the industrial farming model where we farmers
are the stakeholders but following that costly input dependent method, our
children never wants to regard our profession and take it up for their
livelihood. I don’t think that I should promote that dependent technologies
where in farmers and their families only see distress throughout their lives.
We don’t have to sale our independence and our farmland to the giant food
corporations and allow them to control the whole value chain by patenting and
owing the seed. Apart from having an Indian government budget of 2.83 lakh
crore rupees for agriculture and allied activities including irrigation in
2020-21, how many young people of India wants to be a farmer?? Now, can you
dream to be a farmer or look at your child as a farmer. You need food thrice a
day. It is a life supporting activity, so much of policy level supports are
there, but still you cannot dream to be a farmer. Why???
This led to my realization that there exist a
huge Food Conspiracy. That starts from patenting and owing the seeds of our
food. Modifying them with the brain which enables human beings to practice
their freewill and forget the inter-related co-existence to become
self-oriented, creating them to hybrid seeds and seize the right of the farmers
to keep their own seeds. Big corporations in the Food Industry has the hunger
to dominate the whole food business right from the seeds to the feeds making
food production very costly and selling inputs to farmers. The very first and
the simple way to do that is control the seeds, own them and sale them. That
gives them also the license to create a package of practice to grow those seeds
to food where in they can introduce more inputs like fertilizers, pesticides,
weedicides, fungicides. Cide means an act of killing. So, it is killing the
co-existence, killing the environment, killing the farmers, killing human
children through slow poisoning. This I feel is a Genocide. This is also
killing our local food wisdom which is our rich food culture. How???
The human race is very vast and diverse with
nature’s boon of having that brain. With the diversity we have diverse
habitats. All habitats have their own identity of flora and fauna which also
becomes the food of the human race. I believe wherever we are born, Nature
gives us food. That is our local food that grows wild or cultivated by farmers
with the right to keep their seeds for the next season. But this is a big
challenge for those above-mentioned Agribusiness Corporations as they need lots
of time to own all the seeds God created. So, they want to change the food
habit of the people to something that they own from seeds to the feeds. They
have the power to augment the government policies and enter to the fields of
the small, marginal and tribal farmers through subsidized schemes, research
trials through the research organizations like the Universities and Krishi
Vigyan Kendras, credit linkage and selling loans to farmers to purchase their
inputs and technologies even with farmer’s land as mortgage. They provide
scholarships and awards to agricultural students and they have the power to
tame the whole system. They know that it is a herculean task to eliminate such
a big race of small farmers, but they also know that they can domesticate them by
destroying the local food wisdom and taking control of the small seeds. They
can reach the consumers with the synthetic food items developed out of their
industrial model of farming and change food into a commodity that they control.
Looking at the sales of the baby food packets of those corporates, which
according to the claims are made of wheat, rice, corn etc., I wonder! Our
farmers growing them should have been very well to do and rich but, on the
contrary they commit suicides and their kids migrate out of the villages in
search of other jobs. We never sleep without food, but nobody dreams to be a
farmer. Where is the mismatch???? Let’s realize…...
My realization led me to explore and learn from
very knowledgeable farmers in the villages who are the Barefoot scientists for
me with their traditional knowledge wisdom. My travel and stay with many
farmers of the northeast India led me to unlearn many things about the
conventional farming methods which I learnt from the agricultural books. My
mentors who supported me in learning farming from nature by changing my look
towards growing food, supporting me by providing the platform to perform what I
intended to led me to establish my model of food forest where I grow local food
inside the forest. I landed up creating my local food sanctuaries. I remember
that ferry journey on the river Brahmaputra with my mentor Madam Peggy Carswell
from Majuli island to Jorhat. She told me about the potentialities we have in
the form of natural resources and how organically we can grow our crops with
sustainable management of our natural resources. My outlook to organic farming
with organic inputs and producing certified organic food products which are
costly changed that day. I perceive that day that again in the name of organic
farming, we should not pump in costly organic inputs to our farmers and make
food costly and only for them who can afford it. I was doing all the trials of
my model and was looking for building my confidence to disseminate them to my
fellow farmers. My greatest achievement came in the form of the trust of my Guru
and the person whom I respect most Dr. Kamal Malla Bujarbaruah sir who trusted
my intentions and supported me to create the Spread NE Farm Learning Centre and
the Local Food Sanctuary at Sonapur, Assam. Thus, my exploration with more
indigenous technical knowhows started and now I am a confident ecological
farmer with my ability to produce good food for you depending on my own
resources.
In my model of food forest, I grow all the
local crops inside the forest as wild plants. Whenever I look at the trees and
shrubs growing naturally in the forest, I feel without the freewill practiced
by human beings how they grow so strong naturally. The edible fruits, yams,
herbs etc. are more well grown and naturally tasty than our gardens. This quest
of mine to explore the forest as the place to incorporate local food crops led
me to incorporate food crops to the forest and to my surprise, they thrive so
beautifully. I now can feel the co-existence. I question my books that promote
harmful weedicides as I found my local crops grow together with them inside the
food forest. One morning when I was working in the food forest, I noticed that
dry bamboo leaves which fell down from the plant have covered all the area
where I planted my king chillis. I knew that this is natural mulching and now
these leaves don’t allow other plants to grow near the Chilli plant. They also
store so much of moisture and keep the soil wet. They make a conducive
environment for the soil microbes to grow. A lesson learnt that day. I was once
staying at a remote village of Nagaland and learning local farming techniques
from my fellow farmer Edalia of Old Tesen village. He introduced me to the new
way of growing king chillis under bamboo grooves. I learnt from him how they
move up the hills full of bamboo and other trees and with a small spade and
seedlings of chilli they plant them inside the forest. I practiced to make a
pit with the small handle spade with my right-hand, plant the sapling with my
left hand and stamp the soil with my legs while moving up. Many times, I heard
that its very difficult to grow something under the bamboo canopy but Edalia
taught me to prove that wrong. Now in our food forest we grow king chillis,
other local chillis, native egg plants and tree tomatoes and mustard leaves
under bamboo. Last year, under one bamboo canopy we planted 100 chilli plants
and harvested more than 50 kgs of king chillis and the market value is about
Rs.10000. Another observation is that the plants are very healthy compared to
other Chilli plants that we grow in open field in our Farm Learning Centre. The
incidence of common viral disease of king chilli was minimum. That is my bamboo
based cropping pattern which is climate friendly farming.
One morning we noticed that few of our yams in
the food forest are uprooted and they are eaten up. We explored and found that
some new guests have arrived in our food forest and they are the porcupines.
They love eating the yams. Last season we had a good harvest of different kinds
of yam which fetched us good price in the market apart from feeding our new
friends. We have wood apple and Indian coffee plum plants in the forest and now
we notice so many new saplings growing without us planting them. This is
because of the large population of birds growing every day in the forest. They
are the best farmers of mother nature. Wild elephants come at night sometimes
and eat tender bamboo shoots but to my surprise they do not destroy our food
crops. We are growing lots of elephant apple trees inside the food forest for
them. Left over fruits we can cut into small pieces; sun dry on bamboo mats and
pack them in bamboo cups to give you the best herbal drink with both
nutritional and therapeutic properties. We can sale them as low volume and high
value forest food products for the ever-growing wellness food market. It is fun
to make seed bombs with compost balls and inserting a seed like the roselle or
a pumpkin and throw them in the food forest. We call it bombing the forest
where the color of the blast is a green plant which yields good food for us and
other creatures. Creating the food forest gave me the actual feeling of
compassion and inter-dependence which I feel has become the lifeline now. If
you are excited to be a part of creating food forest, join me in my three days
Farm for Soul Campings. You can get the informations by following www.fb.com/spreadne.
We must relook our economic development model.
Our economy is so parasitic that we intend to extract everything for self. That
is the reason we fail to establish the economy of permanence that we seek.
Sustainability is always a big ask but is possible through the economy of
enterprise like the honey bees of my food forest. They take the pollen and the
nectar but in return they fertilize the flower. I feel as a farmer I have to
come out of the grip of that model of farming where we never think about giving
back to the nature. That model is harming us and the world for the vested
interest of few food giant multinational corporations. They are very strong
economically and with a never-ending hunger to acquire power by controlling our
food system. The solution lies with us to think and feed our kids and fellow
humans what is good for them and they have the right to choose what they love
to eat. That is the food sovereignty and that is the freedom to a healthy life.
Our young generation must value this crisis and they have to become the
custodians of our beautiful nature, our villages and the local food wisdom. It
is time to lead an economic movement based on the concept of local
people-local food-local economy, my mantra for the last one and a half
decade. In this journey I am taking my young Social Agripreneurs together whom
I call my Green Commandos and Green Apostles. In the last 3 years I have
trained 426 Green Commandos in the food forest and they are reaching out more
people in our villages to form a green tribe who lead the combat against the
hunger of the Industrial farming system. They lead through action and practice
regenerative farming which I term as my low-cost ecological farming practices.
In the last decade I have trained more than 9000 school children and college
students to value our local wisdom and grow them as school and homestead food
forest. It is important to sow these seeds in their mindset. I have started the
programme Attracting Students to Agripreneurship (ASAP) and I seriously feel
that we have to do it asap. I have become a farmer now who sow seeds more on
people’s mindset than land. I feel Nature has bestowed upon me that
responsibility to create models and motivate people towards self-reliant but
interdependent methods of food production.
Happiness is a very important factor of life
today. Whole life we run after this desire to be happy. But it is difficult to
measure the level of happiness we need. I observe many organizations and social
workers coming to me and showing their interests to improve the quality of life
of our farmers in the villages. Many complain that after doing some
interventions, that our farmers do not change. Many government officials
complain that even if they give subsidies our farmers do not take up their
models. Many bank officials that their credits are not sold and they cannot
meet their targets. My simple answer to them is that the people you want to
change are happier than you contended with nature. They have defined their
boundaries of happiness in whatever they have. I often ask them who is more
happy- you in a concreted home or a farm family amidst green nature. Your
biophilic nature brings out your whaw! When you visit a beautiful village.
Their kids are more happy playing around the village, eating fresh and local
food, maintaining a high cultural heritage and leading a slow lazy life. Early
to rise, early to sleep, physical works, God-fearing nature, the beautiful
afternoon nap etc.etc. Are we from the concreted world with a stressed
lifestyle happier and healthier than them? So, who has to change now? I ask
them do they have analysis of how much change they want to make in the farmer’s
lifestyle. Do they know the circumference of the development they want to make so
that they do not create need into greed? Happiness index is highest amidst
nature and that has to be maintained. Many people from the fast world come and
stay in our farm camping site and our model villages by paying money to just
refresh and control the pace of our life.
Profitability both ways whether natural
benefits or financial benefits are more when we follow climate friendly
ecological farming practices and grow our economy on the local food wisdom. By
farming with nature and creating food forest we are lowering our cost of
production and adding to our profits. We can add services like farm campings,
educational tourism, food tourism, food forest trekking, trainings, processing
forest food to low volume and high value wellness food products. We can spread
happiness and immunity building healthy healing food for people. Let us choose
to grow together with nature and understand the importance of the balance of
Interdependence and mutual coexistence. The ball is on your court to think and
act to demand local food or grow your own local food. Just think about what is
your favorite local fruit. How many years or days you have stopped planting
your favorite fruit? If it is a long time, then there lies the danger bigger
than climate change. Lets think about growing our local food or adopting a
local farmer for our healthy food.
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