One acre farming in one year - 2

May 12, 2017

One acre farming in one year - 2 - millets and more

November - February : growing rice, peanuts, millets and pulses

After sowing the Kattuyanam rice crop in one portion of our land, we divided the remaining acre into three different sections to sow a mixed crop of millets, pulses, peanuts and rice.

(Mixed cropping and intercropping are examples of polyculture farming where more than one crop is grown on the land at the same time. This helps manage pest attacks and helps keep in check soil nutrient depletion. Far different from monoculture farming, growing a single crop on the land, which requires heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides.)

Polyculture farming is a foolproof way of not putting all your eggs in one basket. This way even if one crop fails the season, you've still got a back up of the other crops you've planted. We came across this method after reading Bharat Mansata's 'The Vision of Natural Farming' which described in detail Bhaskar Save's methods of natural farming.

Of the three sections of land we'd divided to plant our mixed crop, the first was an intercrop of green gram and the traditional Chandikar rice. The second an intercrop of peanut and Chandikar rice. The third section was a mixed crop of horse gram, beans, foxtail millet and green gram.

If most of these crop names makes no sense to you, it was the same for Mani and me in the beginning too. Even though we'd read about them while finding out which crops to grow in which season, they were still just names to us. It's only after having grown these crops and used them to cook our own food did we start to understand them the way we do tomatoes and onions.

When cyclone Varda hit us, the section where we'd planted the Chandikar rice and green gram had gotten completely flooded. It wasn't only because of the rainfall but also thanks to the neighbouring farmer who had to cut a ditch to drain the excess water of his land (onto ours because our land was steeper than his). We couldn't blame him for doing so seeing as we were all wedged in anyway. Thankfully, the remainder of our land hadn't flooded as much and the crops in them survived.

The polyculture farming principles we'd applied had stood the test.

After the rains were done, the crops were hardly watered thanks to the placid non-working motor on our land. We had to ask our neighbour for water who generously shared his resource with us, albeit after making us wait a fortnight post our request. By which time, we could hear the silent screaming of our crops. It was a measure of how hardy these crops were that they withstood the waterless treatment and didn't die on us.

It was surprising to see the Chandikar rice not having withered, given that we weren't able to water this patch even the bare minimum needed for it to flourish. Most of the 'improved' water intensive rice varieties like IR-8, Super Ponni and Bapatla grown and consumed enormously, would have died within a week from such lack of water. The fact that the Chandikar survived through three months of sporadic watering was quite the feat. This was one truly drought resistant crop.

By February, the mixed crop patch of millets and pulses had started giving their yield. Having experienced our harvest of the Kattuyanam rice where bringing in the yield was a one time thing, collecting the harvest from these crops felt like being at an all-you-can-eat buffet. We'd pick the beans, horse gram and green gram from all the plants and three days later, there'd be fresh produce to pick.

The foxtail millet, peanuts and rice we harvested at separate times by the end of the month. It felt really good to see the amount of produce we were able to grow, given that this was our first season in farming (with a cyclone thrown in!). Along with our mix of border crops (Agati, Gliricidia and Indigofera plants to help manage pests and add to soil fertility) and the Kattuyanam rice we'd sowed earlier, we'd grown a total of 10 crops on our one acre of land at the same time. And this was just one season!

Seeing these crops grow without the need for indiscriminate water use and with no input of industrial pesticides and fertilizers, it was reassuring to see before me the answer to the question condescendingly posed by our critics,

"What farming can you do in one acre of land?"