"Paadi-Panta" is a very common Telugu wording which means agriculture and animal husbandry.May be our fore fathers who have been cultivating this land for centuries might have realized that agriculture in long run will not prosper with out animals on farms.This must be the only secret they passed down healthy soils to their next generations.
Chemical fertilizers are introduced to us with Green Revolution as a substitutes to NPK but governments failed to educate farmers on how to use them and maintain soil health in long run while using chemical fertilizers.Our farmers use at least 3-4 times the recommended doses of fertilizers.I have seen our neighbouring fields where commercial corps are grown only on chemical fertilizers with out any organic manure or cover crops for the last 10 years, soil on those fields now is just a pile of life less sand.Same is the case with case with pesticides, we are destroying the entire ecosystem in the name of crop protection.Last 10-15 years I have seen drastic changes.On a rainy day our surrounding paddy fields used to echo with frog croaking all over,now I hardly hear a frog.I remember seeing hundreds of vultures preying on dead animals and clear it in a while but now I can't spot a vulture and dead animals have to rot.And list goes on and on..
I believe the best thing that has happened to Indian agriculture in last decade is multi fold price rise of chemical fertilizers.Don't be surprised,let me tell you why? This might in some short term take cut in the profits from agriculture if any.But in the long term it will definitely reduce the over usage of fertilizers and farmers will start thinking of bring back cattle on farms.I am already seeing this change ,many farmers started experimenting with Subhash Plalekar's approach , vermicompost ,silt from irrigation lakes and other alternates.Once these farmers are successful others will follow. This will bring back life in our soils for sure.
I can very clearly see the difference on our farm after applying farm yard manure(FYM) and silt from near by irrigation lakes.After applying silt and FYM to our palm oil plantation its moisture retention capacity increased many fold and yield increased too.Same is the case with coconut inter cropped with cocoa.All these days we used to buy FYM from neighbouring villages,but recently its price too increased many fold.
We have to bring back cattle on our farm to start our experiments with jeevamrutham and vermicompost for now.Our goal is to make our farm chemical fertilizer and pesticide free.
Will keep you updated on the progress.
