Turning to Farming

Uttam Kheti, Madhyam Ban,
Adham Chakri, Bheek Nidhan.
(Agriculture best, Business medium,
Employment worst, Begging avoidable.)
- Ancient Indian Wisdom on human livelihood

This year's summer vacation in India was spent in hunting for plots of land, suitable for agriculture. Now, why would a Mechanical Engineer married to a Mathematics Teacher cum High School Coordinator be suddenly interested in farming? Let me tell you why...

The interest in farming was always there in me. I was attracted towards agriculture, and the thought of this activity always comforted me. My maternal grandfather (Mr. Thomas Lukose of Quilon (now Kollam, Kerala) owned farmland, and I used to watch him work in his farm.

My paternal grandfather (Mr. Philipose of Puthoor, Kottarakara) was also a farmer, but as he died when I was a toddler, I could not see him in action or interact with him in any way.
As I was brought up in Bombay (now Mumbai), far from my grandfather's farm, I did not get enough opportunities to spend as much time as I would have liked to in the farm. But the germ of that desire was there in me.

When I was born (in my grandfather's house in Kollam), my grandpa had immediately visited an astrologer-cum-fortune-teller, who recorded in a tiny note-book (which book is unfortunately misplaced now) that I would make my fortune in Agriculture. Since the time I heard of it (from my mother, much later in life when I was in my early twenties) I have occasionally tried to imagine myself indulging in Agriculture.
So farming activity is not so much a bolt-from-the-blue for me as it may appear. However, what re-activated this dormant interest was a chance meeting with one Mr. Rathnappa, who was then the Senior Branch Manager for Vijaya Bank, at its Bannerghatta branch. He also happened to be holding a master's degree (M. Sc.) in Agriculture!

One day Mr. Rathnappa visited my house in Spring Valley, Bangalore, and was impressed by the Avacado tree laden with fruits standing right in front of my house. (Yes, that's the tree pictured above.) During the course of our discussion, he mentioned to me (as a piece of advice) that I should try and procure two or three acres of land nearby and do some "innovative" agriculture.This chance remark unleashed a long-hidden desire, and set me thinking seriously of this possibility.

I did have misgivings about this proposed activity, and I remember my first question to Mr. Rathnappa was whether farming would be a profitable activity, and if so, how come so many of India's farmers have been committing suicides recently. He assured me that any farmer who works hard, and does not mismanage his resources (like deviating funds to other activities instead of the agricultural purpose for which the loan was availed), will always be successful.

He also encouraged me by saying that agriculture is the "activity of the future". He pointed out that there were a lot of people migrating from rural India to the new urban India, and that this trend needed to be reversed, and it would be people like me who would have to lead the way.
He took me to see how his classmate and friend had developed a 125 acres farm near Harohalli with scientific methods, and there I saw the "fruits" of his labor in the form of abundant crops of bananas, etc. It was quite inspiring to see what could be achieved by a determined farmer who employs scientific farming methods. This picture of a bunch of bananas is of that farm in Harohalli.

I came back from that visit, determined to find for myself some farm land that I could cultivate when I returned to India, but alas, finding land was not as easy as it seemed. Even in these economically depressed times, the land prices were not any lower than at other times.

The results of my hunt for farmland will be pictured in my next post.