Cocoa in Oil Palm

Planted Cocoa as inter crop in our 10 years old Oil Palm plantation. We should have done this four years back. Around 5^th year is the ideal time for planting cocoa in Oil Palm.

Procured cocoa saplings from the nursery maintained by Mondelez formerly known as Cadbury at Ganganagudem village (Close to Eluru), West Godavari @4.5 Rupees a plant.

Cocoa saplings

Our Oil Palm is spaced at 9X9 meters and planted cocoa in center between two rows of Oil Palm at 3X3 meters. With this spacing we planted around 140 cocoa plants per acre. While planting vermin compost enriched with VAM (Arbuscular Mycorrhizal) is applied in the pits.

Plantation Layout

In ideal conditions cocoa should start yielding from second year and should attain maximum yield by 5^th or 6^th year.  Cocoa Yield in Oil palm is not par with cocoa in Coconut. Average yield of cocoa in Oil Palm in our area is around 150 – 300 Kilograms per acre while it is 300-500 Kilograms in coconut.

Soon we will start giving Jeevarutham along with water and as spray as well.

That’s all for now, will keep you updated.

Update - July 2016

We did the training and pruning of the cocoa sapling in last 2-3 months and this is how they look after 1 year of planting. We noticed flowering on one of our plants.

This is the shape we intent to give to our plants as they grow.

Jeevamrutham through drip

Finally succeeded in injecting Jeevamruthatm into drip after filtering. This is what we did.

Prepared Jeevamrutham in a 200 liters drum and stirred it for 2 days and left it undisturbed on third day so that all the heavy particles will settle down. Filtered 150 liters of it into another drum with a cloth and left it undisturbed for 1 hour in the second drum. Covered the tip of the Venturi with another cloth and inserted the tip of the Venturi in into the drum. That’s it. Venturi sucked Jeevarutham at 60 Liters/hour. 

So far we finished two cycles and did not run into any issues and I am hopeful we will not run into any issues like drippers clogging as we are thoroughly filtering. Let’s see.

Palm Oil Yield – 2014

On one of our Palm Oil plot we recorded the yield for the year 2014.

On our 5 acre plot total yield was around 55 tones which translate to 11 tons / acre. This is 2 tones per acre less than 2013 yield.

Palm oil has to be harvested throughout the year every fortnight, but 75% of yield is between May and Sep.

Price paid to farmers was decided by OILFED based on a predefined formula. OILFED declares the price per ton every month. Price paid to farmers was in the range between 6300 – 7500 in 2014.

NREGA : Death knell for Indian agriculture and economy.

NREGA which is aimed at providing at atleast 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every household in villages and improve the rural infrastructure is turning out to be a worst nightmare for Indian agriculture sector.

Abundant and affordable work force was one of the reasons why Indian agriculture was able to overcome the challenges like small holding, lack of mechanization, lack of technology advancement, etc. Now with lack of proper execution NREGA is turning one of our strengths into our weakness.

Let me explain how this is being executed in our area, every morning hundreds of people gather at the proposed work site for attendance and then spend close to couple of hours doing nothing productive and then leave. Literally they get paid for attendance. And why would anybody to go a farmer’s farm to work and get paid the same amount.

Every other sector is being adversely impacted with this. Industrialist turned Politician who got elected as Guntur MP recently quoted in parliament that when they advertised for 200 Engineering positions they received 2000 applications but when they advertised for 2000 low skilled work force they received mere 200 applications.

Does this impact just agriculture alone, no each and every sector and each and every citizen will be impacted. With increasing input costs prices of the commodities like milk, rice, wheat, pulses, cooking oil, fruits and vegetables will be increased and all of us have to pay more to feed our families. On the other hand industries which depend on agriculture for their raw material like sugar, cotton and other agricultural commodities need to pay more and eventually that is passed on to the end customer.

We can survive without any other sector but not agriculture. We need food to feed this nation. Agriculture cannot and will not stop but evolve out of this.

Hope the new governments here both in state and center will address this problem at most urgency.

Jai kisan

Dairy Show 2014

Dairy show 2014 was held at Hitex, Hyderabad between Feb 1 – 3 showcasing various breeds of cattle, latest technologies, equipment and government schemes to promote dairy sector.

Glad to say that this year native breeds like Ongole, punganur, Gir, Vechur dominated the show. Most of the progressive farmers are keen on preserving these precious breeds.

Various technologies involving Hydroponic fodder, Silage preparation, Azolla cultivation along with different kinds of fodder were on display. Hydroponic technology attracted most of the farmers but seemed expensive without any subsidies.

Equipment like Milking machines, Chaff cutters, mini bottling and packing units were on display.

Punganu Cow & Bull

Ongole Bull

Gentle Gaint - Ongole Bull

Ongole Cow

Ongole Calf 

Punganur Bull

Gir Bull

Gir Cow

Vechur Cow

Ongole Cow

Murrah Buffalo

Palm Oil Yield – 2013

On one of our Palm Oil plot we recorded the yield for the year 2013.

On our 5 acre plot total yield was around 65 tones which translate to 13 tons / acre. This is the highest recorded yield on our farm so far. Last couple of years it was around 10 tons per acre.

Palm oil has to be harvested throughout the year every fortnight, but 75% of yield is between May and Sep.

Price paid to farmers was decided by OILFED based on a predefined formula. OILFED declares the price per ton every month. Price paid to farmers was in the range between 5800 – 7900 in 2013.

Amrutha Farms portfolio

Our farm portfolio in a nutshell.