Experimenter-farmers - It is time to change.

Farmers are experimenters, entrepreneurs, researchers, producers and they take lot of risks. But still they continue to struggle because of our capitalistic design of the way economy is made to work. They are not able to fix the price for the products that they produce, and hence the decisions are made by agregators, middlemen, and rich corporates. 

It is time that the system change. 

 

From Seedlings to Seed Again!!!

A shot from my field trip to Magdi, Bangalore.

Nursery of paddy variety called "Rathnagiri", a vary tasty rice as claimed by the local farmrers. Once the nursery of seedlings is about 25 to 30 days old, they are transplanted into the main field where they will take another 4 months or so for maturing. Then the rice is harvested, dried, processed (boiled and dried) and pound to get rice. And before the paddy is processed, the farmer selects the best grains and dry them well and keep them in special seed storage bins with pest repelling plants so that he/she has quality seeds for the next crop. So from seeds to seedlings and back to seeds or rice, how much work is there ?!!!

Imagine, if the poor farmers did not toil, what will we do for our delicious food grains?

Agriculture is one area where indigenous knowledge and expertise is so much that even the experts dont fully understand the systems in its wholeness. A thousand salutes to the poor Indian Farmer !!!