Making of an Urban Organic Farmer - a True Story

 

My name is Kumar Jayaraman, I've been a software professional for more than 16 years and designing user friendly products for web and mobile application is my passion. I love nature, photography and travelling. I was born and brought up in a farmer’s family who lived at Krishnapuram village, Tamilnadu. 

My parents initially followed Green Revolution agriculture practices (i.e. chemical farming), after few years due to high chemical fertilizer expenses and drought conditions they were unable to sustain in agriculture. All of a sudden my father had a stroke and passed away. Then we sold our land, and migrated to Chennai for studies. For survival we bought some land at my mother’s native in Andhra Pradesh and let out for lease to a local farmer.

After a lot of struggle I finished my graduation and landed in an IT job in a creative field, which gave me an opportunity to travel to US and Singapore for work. I got married and lived with family in Singapore for five years. Meanwhile our lessee farmer was facing less corp yield and incurred losses, and he was unable to pay our lease amount for many years, then decided to leave our land as barren. 

Initially he was earning more by producing high yield crops using lot of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, but year on year the soil fertility got spoiled, corp yield went down and also produced unhealthy food corps.

From childhood I had more interest in farming, so along with my profession whenever I get some time I use to do research on web, which led me to read articles and watch videos on organic/natural farming and got inspired of Dr. Nammalvar and Padmashri Subhash Palekar's farming methods. 

In 2015, we decided to relocate back to India and help local farming communities to convert from green revolution to organic/natural farming practice. We were worried about our son’s education so we thought moving to Bangalore and that way we could spend spare time taking care of the farm.  

The basic need for our life is food, and without this, survival is tough or impossible. Today most of the food we consume are produced by unnatural means using GMO seeds, Chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and ultimately people have no option but to consume it, which led to increase in number of obesity, diseases like cancer and so on. 

Today people are realizing the need for good food for their loved ones. We decided to take up this cause, and make it a reality. Since 2016, we started involving ourselves in doing natural farming and try to produce and consume chemical and pesticide free food for a healthy life.



To begin with, we tested the soil, and came to know the manure content, nutrients and micro-nutrients are low and also PH value is high. I consulted Experts in this field and went about converting my land to organic.  I decided to fill my farm land with Vandal Sand from nearby lake, after that for almost one year I grew only green manure crops and also added lot of Desi Cow farm yard manure to increase soil structure and manure content in the soil, later I started rotation crop plantation and followed Nammalvar and Subhash Palekar natural farming methods. Now I’m producing naturally grown crops which is 100% chemical fertilizers and pesticides free.

Let us wake up and support organic/natural farmers and save our land, water, soil & souls from contamination for the sake of our future generations

Tags: organic farmer, farmer, urban farmer