Visit to Mani’s farm on 20th August 2023
I’m glad to share the experience of the visit to the farm of Thiru. Mani, that I undertook along with Karthik, Gopi Devarajan and Arun (Ainthinai )
Mani’s farm is about 20 km from Tiruvannamalai. He came all the way to Tiruvannamalai to show us the way to his farm, through the vayal (paddy fields). We received a warm welcome from his family – his son, daughter-in-law.
As soon as we arrived they gave us native papaya, guava and lemon juice, all from their farm. After these refreshments we started going around their farm. They have about half a dozen native cows, which they use to make bio-fertilizers. The very tall native papaya trees have strong stems, and they use a ladder propped on it. Mani grows a range of native variety rices – kAttuyanam, kavuni etc. He gave me seeds for thooyamalli and mappilai samba, both of which we have germinated and transplanted in our farm.
Theirs is a highly self-sustaining farm and this was particularly striking. They have banana, guava, pomegranate, lemon, and papaya fruits trees – all native varieties, which they grow for their own consumption. There are two deep open wells, with submersible pumps used for irrigating their paddy. They have the practice of growing nava-danya (variety of seeds used as cover crop), which is then turned over into the soil before planting paddy. Mani has a tractor too.
Overall there is self-sufficiency in their methods. We asked about whether it was always an organic farm. Mani shared his story. Ten years ago he practiced chemical farming. And it was a hand-to-mouth livelihood. He had installed drip irrigation. Once, they had mixed pesticides into the irrigation water; a cow drank that water and died on the same day. This episode upset Mani greatly. Some weeks later, he himself drank the water from the irrigation tank, not knowing that chemicals had been mixed… he fell so sick that it took 15-20 days to recover and come back from hospital. This was a turning point for him… when he realized how toxic the pesticides were.
He had been reading Pasumai Vikatan, heard about Subash Palekar, and went for training in the ZBNF approach. He then started implementing these techniques, despite resistance from the neighbouring farmers. At that point of time, his son was in Engineering college, and he faced a lot of financial challenges, like paying the fees. He continued farming organically despite all this. There were times when he harvested just 2 sackfuls of rice per acre! However his trainers encouraged him to continue, and assured him that the yield would improve. He slowly started increasing the acreage that he farmed organically. Organizations like OFM and reStore offering him a fair price was a great encouragement. He is now in a very good situation on his farming journey. Every 15 days he hires a load vehicle and brings 3 Tonnes of organic rices into Chennai… He has influenced a few neighbouring farmers (about 12) to also go organic. Mani and one other farmer take the responsibility of taking all their produce to market. He highly values our support and is thankful for it. He also promised to come for an event to speak with our community, in the near future.
We discussed the possibility of growing other crops, rather than just rice. Mani is open to discuss this idea further. As we planned to leave, his family had cooked up a meal for us and fed us a full spread. It tasted particularly good, which I would attribute to two causes – one, the quality of fresh organic ingredients, and the other, the affection with which they cooked for us. The family grows small quantities of urad and other items that are needed for their household. After lunch we headed back to Chennai.