Section V - Enough of Problems - An inspiring tribal called Anna Renke and our visit to his farm in Solapur
The Suryamandal
From Problem to Inspiration
The previous 3 sections dealt in some detail about the problems. Moving onto some action and inspiration, this section contains in detail about the visit of ours to his farm in Solapur. This report was compiled by Arun
Solapur Visit Report
December 4-5th 2004
Overview
It’s been some time we wanted to visit Mr.Renke’s Organic Farm in Solapur. This visit was considered crucial to get a practical insight on how we could go further on the Magadi Project. Finally this became fruitful on December 4th 2004, seven of us got this unique opportunity to really see how Mr.Renke has been so successful in his Organic Farming method even in a totally arid region of Solapur, where the rain fall is as low as 400 mm.
In this report we will try to document what we observed about Mr.Renke’s unique organic farming technique and also lay down the crucial future directions for Magadi project.
Background to Mr.Renke
Mr.B.K.Renke, who is basically from Maharasthra, belongs to nomadic tribal people. Like many other tribal landless nomadic people he also migrated to big city in search of livelihood. After spending years in one of the most subsistence living environments of Mumbai slums, he realized that just like other migrated Villagers he has also fallen pray to the false dreams of Urban materialism. That’s when he decided that given an opportunity and use of right agricultural techniques migration of poor people from villages especially with a livelihood need can be avoided. Since then he has devoted himself for more than 10 years in practicing and mastering his own style of Organic farming technique. His objective is to achieve a greater yield in agriculture for self-sustenance of the poor villagers living in extreme arid conditions. This needs to be achieved at a low cost, with minimal water usage and better use of wasteland. Also a natural way of enriching the soil nutrients needs to be designed instead of using Fertilizers, which has eroded the soil nutrition to extreme levels since the beginning of Green revolution. A natural way to control pests also needs to be devised instead of using pesticides.
Organic Farming Technique as followed by Mr.Renke
His model example for Organic Farming requires 10 Guntas of Land, this can be arid wasteland with minimum of 1000 CC/year/Gunta water entitlement. This is one fifth of water required when compared with conventional green agriculture method used for sugarcane. And much much less than the quantity of water used in flood irrigation methods, which are extensively used in conventional Paddy cultivation. Idea is to convert maximum of the sunlight fallen on this land to Photosynthesis.
The process begins with the crucial initial step of enriching the Soil. With plant roots usually going a few feet down the soil, importance of the nutrients availability in the topsoil is very important. Water holding capacity of the Soil is also very important. A natural way to induce this nutrient level first time when the soil is prepared and then to sustain it as we use it is very crucial. This is at the heart of the organic farming technique practiced by Mr.Renke. Ingredient that is prepared for this purpose is called Humus. Recipe for preparing humus requires 10 tons of biomass, which can be aggregated either from the nearby land or procured from elsewhere for the initial requirement. In order to sustain the nutrient level of the Soil as it is used, it is important that the some quantity of the biomass grown on the land is returned back to the soil. This is possible since not all the parts of the plant are eventually used as crop. Preparation of humus can be either done in a central place, which then is carried to the land where it needs to be used or it can be prepared at the place of use. Losses will be minimal if the humus is prepared at the place of use, but then this comes at an expense with more effort involved. Estimated time period for creating the Humus is around 2-3 months, once the Humus is ready then the topsoil is prepared by using the following recipe. For every 1 square foot land 4 liters of Humus is mixed with 4 liters of soil. This soil requires to be watered for a while such that the typical breakdown phase of biomass completely happens. We also saw a pit type humus preparation where in the entire biomass was put in a huge tank and then the biomass was covered with a layer of soil.
We could appreciate the importance of the Humus and initial Soil preparation by listening to Mr.Renke, but however we failed to get a detail insight of how to prepare the Humus step by step. This necessitates a much-detailed exploration of the steps involved in Humus preparation in the Magadi Project. Such that when the initial demo implementation of Organic farming is ready, then we require a knowledge repository using that farmers should be able to easily implement this technique.
After the soil preparation the next task is to prepare the layout for the crops in ten Guntas, for this Mr.Renke has his own unique creative technique. One Gunta of land could be also taken for construction of a small hut/house for the very poor people who might as well as in the need of a shelter along with livelihood needs. This also helps in giving a close attention to the Organic farming technique practiced. A typical layout of the 10 Guntas Land is given below, here only 8 Guntas of land used for crop with other two Guntas being used for House and Cattle rearing.
The previous 3 sections dealt in some detail about the problems. Moving onto some action and inspiration, this section contains in detail about the visit of ours to his farm in Solapur. This report was compiled by Arun
Solapur Visit Report
December 4-5th 2004
Overview
It’s been some time we wanted to visit Mr.Renke’s Organic Farm in Solapur. This visit was considered crucial to get a practical insight on how we could go further on the Magadi Project. Finally this became fruitful on December 4th 2004, seven of us got this unique opportunity to really see how Mr.Renke has been so successful in his Organic Farming method even in a totally arid region of Solapur, where the rain fall is as low as 400 mm.
In this report we will try to document what we observed about Mr.Renke’s unique organic farming technique and also lay down the crucial future directions for Magadi project.
Background to Mr.Renke
Mr.B.K.Renke, who is basically from Maharasthra, belongs to nomadic tribal people. Like many other tribal landless nomadic people he also migrated to big city in search of livelihood. After spending years in one of the most subsistence living environments of Mumbai slums, he realized that just like other migrated Villagers he has also fallen pray to the false dreams of Urban materialism. That’s when he decided that given an opportunity and use of right agricultural techniques migration of poor people from villages especially with a livelihood need can be avoided. Since then he has devoted himself for more than 10 years in practicing and mastering his own style of Organic farming technique. His objective is to achieve a greater yield in agriculture for self-sustenance of the poor villagers living in extreme arid conditions. This needs to be achieved at a low cost, with minimal water usage and better use of wasteland. Also a natural way of enriching the soil nutrients needs to be designed instead of using Fertilizers, which has eroded the soil nutrition to extreme levels since the beginning of Green revolution. A natural way to control pests also needs to be devised instead of using pesticides.
Organic Farming Technique as followed by Mr.Renke
His model example for Organic Farming requires 10 Guntas of Land, this can be arid wasteland with minimum of 1000 CC/year/Gunta water entitlement. This is one fifth of water required when compared with conventional green agriculture method used for sugarcane. And much much less than the quantity of water used in flood irrigation methods, which are extensively used in conventional Paddy cultivation. Idea is to convert maximum of the sunlight fallen on this land to Photosynthesis.
The process begins with the crucial initial step of enriching the Soil. With plant roots usually going a few feet down the soil, importance of the nutrients availability in the topsoil is very important. Water holding capacity of the Soil is also very important. A natural way to induce this nutrient level first time when the soil is prepared and then to sustain it as we use it is very crucial. This is at the heart of the organic farming technique practiced by Mr.Renke. Ingredient that is prepared for this purpose is called Humus. Recipe for preparing humus requires 10 tons of biomass, which can be aggregated either from the nearby land or procured from elsewhere for the initial requirement. In order to sustain the nutrient level of the Soil as it is used, it is important that the some quantity of the biomass grown on the land is returned back to the soil. This is possible since not all the parts of the plant are eventually used as crop. Preparation of humus can be either done in a central place, which then is carried to the land where it needs to be used or it can be prepared at the place of use. Losses will be minimal if the humus is prepared at the place of use, but then this comes at an expense with more effort involved. Estimated time period for creating the Humus is around 2-3 months, once the Humus is ready then the topsoil is prepared by using the following recipe. For every 1 square foot land 4 liters of Humus is mixed with 4 liters of soil. This soil requires to be watered for a while such that the typical breakdown phase of biomass completely happens. We also saw a pit type humus preparation where in the entire biomass was put in a huge tank and then the biomass was covered with a layer of soil.
We could appreciate the importance of the Humus and initial Soil preparation by listening to Mr.Renke, but however we failed to get a detail insight of how to prepare the Humus step by step. This necessitates a much-detailed exploration of the steps involved in Humus preparation in the Magadi Project. Such that when the initial demo implementation of Organic farming is ready, then we require a knowledge repository using that farmers should be able to easily implement this technique.
After the soil preparation the next task is to prepare the layout for the crops in ten Guntas, for this Mr.Renke has his own unique creative technique. One Gunta of land could be also taken for construction of a small hut/house for the very poor people who might as well as in the need of a shelter along with livelihood needs. This also helps in giving a close attention to the Organic farming technique practiced. A typical layout of the 10 Guntas Land is given below, here only 8 Guntas of land used for crop with other two Guntas being used for House and Cattle rearing.
The Suryamandal
SuryaMandal is a creative way to bring together different crops in a circular shape such that there is a better use of space and as well as maximum sunlight is being utilized. SuryaMandal will require one Gunta of land, where in a circle of 5 M radius is drawn from the center. As shown above SuryaMandal has three layers in addition to the corners being utilized for growing other crops in a triangular region. In the outermost & innermost layers we could see Banana, Papaya & turmeric being grown. The typical yield in this kind of arrangement is being mentioned as Turmeric 2 Kg/Plant, which will materialize to Rs.4500/annum/gunta after 9 months. Papaya 120 Kg/plant/year and Banana 65 Kg/Plant. In the middle layer Coriandal, Dhanya and other small crops are grown. Mr.Renke did mention that the central place in the SuryaMandal could be made use for taking bath, by which this water is made use for the plants. Corners were made use to grow Garlic. SuryaMandal has a creative approach, but however we did have questions on the availability of Sun light for the Inner layer of plants, also for the small plants grown in the middle layer. But Mr.Renke did confirm that sufficient light is available during the noontime, and this arrangement also helps in retaining the crucial water from evaporating in these arid regions. Dr.Srinivas did mention that in arid regions evaporation loss is very high, and may be this method might just help to prevent this, which might be the secret behind less need for water. In another experimentation land in the making, we could see how the groundwork is done for the SuryaMandal, in the center of the one Gunta Land a wooden plug is nailed. To this plug a thread is tied whose length is 5 meters, then using this the circle is drawn. Then at one-meter distance each inner circle is drawn from the outer circle. This procedure gives a perfect Geometry for the Suryamandal.
In the adjacent Gunta to SuryaMandal, we could see an interesting combination of mixed crop being grown. We could see Jute, Chilli, and Radish as the main crop but in between we could see Marigold, Datura, Tulasi, which acts as natural pesticides. Also we could see half gunta of this land being used for growing Garlic and Palak. Mr.Renke did mention that to arrive at specific combination of these plants takes time and experimentation, since they need to live symbiotically.
Whole ten Guntas of Land is having a Green fencing, these plants usually are those which after initial nurturing they grow on their own without much regular watering. They not only protect the land from pasturing animals but also act as source for biomass and as pasture to Cattle & goats.
We could see Cactus, Marigold etc being used for green fencing.
The next two Guntas are being used for growing Onion. We could see on the floor many Maze leafs, since the last crop grown in this area was Maze. As per Mr.Renke this is what he calls giving back to the land what we take from it, this helps in sustaining the nutrients of the soil. Ash generated in domestic usage is being applied to plants for the supply of potash. We had questions related to the choice of Onion as this was considered as a crop which requires lot of water, but Mr.Renke told water is supplied only five days once, because of the good water holding capacity of the soil this seems sufficient. Two different patters were seen in the way Onion was grown, one in a zig zag fashion and other in a plain rows. Again water is supplied using pipes, this is the procedure followed throughout. Water is supplied from tank to a strategically located outlet in the center of four Guntas, this outlet is used to supply water to those four Guntas. Such outlets need to be constructed initially once the Soil is ready. Onion yield is estimated at 700 Kg per Gunta for 5 months. Previous crop Maze had a yield of 1 quintal per Gunta. Mr.Renke also mentioned that he is able to grow Basmati rice & wheat with a yield of 16 Kg per Gunta.
In the next Gunta we could see a commercial perfume plant called Vetevera is being grown. This plant, which generated close to Rs.200 per plant revenue, helps the farmer to buy his other needs not supplied from the ten Guntas land.
Next Gunta is being used for growing Fruits. Here we could see Banana, Guava, and other fruits being grown. Remaining other two Guntas are being used to generate biomass, which is then used across the ten Guntas. Mr.Renke mentioned that to maintain the nutrient level of soil of 10 Guntas typically 1/3rd i.e., around 3 Guntas needs to be used for supplying the biomass. Some of the plants grown can be of use and some may not be of commercial use.
As per Mr.Renke this 10 Guntas of land could supply the livelihood for a family of five people with a minimum water requirement of 1000 liters/year.
1 Gunta is 1/40th of an Acre = 100 sq.m or 33X33 sq.ft or 1089 sq.ft.
posted by Prasanna Saligram at 4:44 AM
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