A village farmer redefining agriculture sutra!

Well, it’s not the tigers alone on the ‘list of endangered’in India. A heart-to-heart discussion with an earnest village farmer and you would end up including to the above list, an exhaustive range of rice varieties of India, mostly traditional and indigenous.

With a majority of farmers adopting every possible methodology and technology to get maximum yield in the shortest span of time and using least amount of resources, here is a man with a difference who chose not to follow the crowd. This farmer from a small village called Shivalli is setting a new milestone in agriculture and breathing a new life into traditional, organic farming!  With close to 25 years of experience as a farmer, Mr. Boregowda is an epitome of natural farming  - he has proved many myths about organic farming wrong inspiring many more to follow,  has built a one of its kind museum where he has conserved 210 varieties of rice, and his home frequently transforms into a classroom with Mr. Boregowda educating and training foreign and Indian farmers, students and researchers!! When twenty farmers from South East Asia belonging to an international farmers’ organization called La Via Campesina visited him to understand his work, he made them realize the importance of sticking to indigenous crops supporting his ideas with scientific and technical aspects.

The paddy museum - conserving 210 rice varieties

Mr. Boregowda’s quest for knowledge, his experimentative nature and spirit of innovation has given rise to unique and green approaches to farming that are cost-effective yet promising good returns comparable to the chemical fertilizer and pesticide-based farming. He himself has produced three new varieties of rice including Siddasanna (named after his parents Siddegowda and Sannamma) and Kanadatumba. Also a yoga expert, Mr. Boregowda has travelled across the country gaining knowledge and collecting seeds.

Mr. Boregowda still follows traditional methods of farming for 90% of the activities including sowing and tilling, adopting more of physical touch and emotional involvement with the crops. After a heartfelt discussion with him that lasted a few hours, agriculture to me is more an art than science – an art that demands a heart that “cares”, hands that “nurture” and a peaceful soul that “understands” the crops and what they need, besides all the nutrients and fertilizers to get a healthy yield!

Shivalli, a beautiful village that embraces unbound green fields of paddy and sugarcane, is rightly located a few kilometers away from the “sugar city”, Mandya. A walk down the village is an enchanted experience in itself. Amidst the usual rural setting, Mr. Boregowda’s house stands out with the wooden front door decorated with dried paddy bunches, delicately tied to form an artistic piece. Boregowda, who belongs to a family of farmers prefers to be identified as a conservator of indeginous varieties of crops. An accidental fall from a tree while he was collecting leaves for his livestock pushed him to practice yoga under an expert, to treat his backpain. This incident in his life had a flipside to it that made him understand the relationship between food and health and how pesticides and chemicals are silently killing our lives! This further inspired him to take a firm decision to transform widely practiced, pesticide and chemical fertilizer based farming that he had been following into organic farming, a path that involved risk. This unknown path did have its set of problems – lack of support from fellow beings, criticisms & fear of economic setbacks. Still determined to promote what he believed in, Boregowda stuck to his decision although he experienced economic  downturn in the initial stages. He admits that all these problems were minimal compared to the challenges he had to face due to lack of information about the processes and methodologies involved in organic farming. Marketing was another major challenge and still a reason why many farmers hesitate to take this up.

Mr. Boregowda, farmer with a difference

Organizations like Sahaja Samrudha, (a farmer initiated group to exchange ideas, seeds and share knowledge on sustainable agriculture) has been of great support to such organic farmers including Mr. Boregowda, providing them with quality seeds, right information and has helped build network with people of similar interests. Mr. Boregowda is also greatly involved in the “Save our rice” campaign, a movement to protect and promote traditional rice varieties. Although the government of Karnataka came up with Karnataka State Organic Farming Mission to promote organic farming among farmers in Karnataka and also allocated close to 200 Crore Rupees, Mr. Boregowda is of the opinion that it still requires better planning, monitoring and sincere efforts for it to be successful. He expects more support from the government. He stresses on the urgency for better marketing related plans and programs to effectively reach out to customers and also wants steps to be taken to reduce the presence of middlemen in the supply chain which would ensure better profits to the farmers and fair prices to the consumers.

Mr. Boregowda lives by example by changing his lifestyle to include healthy practices and switching over to organic food himself and instilling the same practices in his family. His message to the farmers is clear. He says, “I want the farmer community to focus on organic farming, prioritizing quality of crops over quantity. It could be beneficial provided they adopt the right strategies and have access to right information. The farmers should practice before preaching by setting an example to the society by changing their own health and food practices to include organic food. Only then can one be called an organic farmer in the true sense”.

He gives a beautiful message to the youth. He says, “Agriculture is the basic source for every other development and is a backbone for the growth of the country. Irrespective of how much educated the youth are and whatever degrees and jobs they hold, I want them to have some basic knowledge about farming. This inturn instills respect for the farmers”.

After a cup of healthy juice made of brahmi leaves followed by a sumptuous meal with his family, I was delighted by the fact that I had just relished Siddasanna rice, organically grown by the farmer himself and all I could pray for was ‘Annadato Sukhibhava’, wishing happiness to the one who just fed me!

With a majority of farmers who are giving up traditional farming and making herculian efforts to cope up with the increasing demands and competition, with giant retail brands who have replaced the mobile sabjiwalas promising the best rates, with an army of scientists experimenting on hybrid varieties and genetically modified foods, with lucrative health insurance biggies that cover an array of ailments and amidst all our busy lives with hardly any time left to think about what we are ‘eating’, should we not slow down and ‘rethink’?