Are plants, animal and humans still an abbreviated phylogeny? Or do we know enough ?
phylogeny/noun: phylogenyStudy of the evolutionary development and diversification of a species or group of organisms, or of a particular feature of an organism.
Reading about Compost, Composting and Organic Manures in my search for most stable source of humus, I came across a very powerful statement by an evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis in 1999 : “A Plant’s death gives rise to billions of new lives and not because the bacteria that are already present in the soil now have access to additional nutrients allowing them to reproduce more, but also because the previous organs of the ‘dead plants’ carry on their life in the form of – BACTERIA”. This theory makes you think about life after death or there is certainly life after death, the form changes but life continues and what we can ultimately say is – There is no Death, we all just continue….
We can relate this to the massive amount of microbes near the root mucosa than anywhere else under the soil. It’s because plants are taking in these microbes through their root hairs and these are used up (change form) to make the plant’s structure.
This also explains the extremely high and a large variety of microorganisms in both cow Manure and Earthworm castings which are used for Organic Farming. Simply put, cows feed on a plant, the plant gets converted to microbes which are carried as the dung. This when applied to soil re-enter the plant. So the processes taking place inside a cow or a worm’s gut can only be speculated where we can imagine the Life Continuum – life is originating out of life.
Coming back to my search for the stable humus to be used for Organic Farming – I guess earthworm humus beats all others hands down.
Why?
Worm Humus thats formed is a stable “Clay-Humus-Calcium-Complex”. This is most critical for Organic Farming. Besides capturing carbon, a better water-holding and increasing CEC – this kind of humus is immune to attacks from microbes and it remains intact for a significant time compared to free humus. It’s less friable and gives soil the stable structure – which is the dream of every farmer.
The nutrients in worm humus are not soluble but organically bound. Only plants with their root hairs are able to make these nutrients accessible. Nutrients do not leach out and are available in this humus-clay-mineral reservoir for the plants to use up when they are needed.So whether we live, die or continue forever soil, plants, animals and humans will remain an abbreviated phylogeny waiting to be discovered in times to come.
Till then use Worm Humus, grow nutrient dense food for all and live a regenerative life…!
It’s time we Re-Farm : Soil-2-Sky
It’s a no brainer and an adage – we are what we eat! But, we never practice this and it has only remained with us in books as an ancient wisdom till now in India. While the world has been at it for over half a century, the Farmers in India still know just – Urea, DAP and MOP. This madness of running after bumper yields year after year on the basis of these N, P and K providing inorganic chemicals has only lead us to the wall. We are at a juncture where farm yields in India keep dropping y-o-y basis, input costs are increasing and more imported fruits are in the market than Indian for their taste and mostly for their appearance. And all this is at the cost of a deteriorating Human Health and a massive increase in diseases. Can Indian farmers not produce that tastier, that better looking, that nutrient dense and vitamin rich farm produce that can also have a positive effect on human health than negative.
Hippocrates, the Greek Physician said this more than 2000 years ago :
Let Thy Food be Thy Medicine From this we can only make out that good health requires good food. If good food is good health then good food can only come from good soils. Healthy soil produce healthy food.If soils are only going to be fed inorganic Fertilizers like Urea, DAP and MOP then the food grown is only going to give us Cancer, Diabetes and Hormonal diseases and this will continue in perpetuity. So the Question comes – how do we grow good, nutrient dense food that can benefit the human health, animal life, the environment and our beloved Mother Earth. It all starts from the Soil all the way Up, from “Soil – 2 – Sky” – cleaning up the mess created by us for 1000s of years. For this we need to begin – Re-farming…!
Re-farming is :
1. Re-farming is understanding nature and mimicking its ways in agriculture.
2. Re-farming is working with nature’s food cycle.
3. Understanding how soil affects health and Re-farm our soils.
4. Re-farming is understanding how soil life affects the environment.
5. Re-farming is building our soils, our health and our environment.
This has been done in countries across the world and its time we preach, teach and get this executed in Indian lands working with Indian Farmers for the benefit of 1.3 bn lives.
Understanding Nature & Mimicking its ways : The pace of nature is slow, it is patient – specially when it comes to change. Any disruptive changes in any of its systems and it collapses creating more damage than the benefit we were expecting. Nature’s way is Slow Food. Plants use the energy from the Sun + CO2 from the environment and produce sugars. These sugars are food for the micro-organisms in the soil. Every plant feeds these micro-organisms through sugars it produces via the roots and in return the micro-organisms provide food/nutrients necessary for the plant to survive back via the root channel. This doesn’t happen instantly, this process is slow.
The plants eat when they are hungry as the micro-organisms provide the food 24 x 7. There is a storage tank created for this food so plants are never without food or water or O2.Unlike conventional agriculture when fertiliser is pushed through the soils or leaves we are pushing this food into the plants. The plant will only absorb what it needs at that time and rest leaches away into our water polluting it.80% of inorganic fertiliser gets leached and with that millions of rupees go down the drain.Instead if we manage the life beneath our soils, grow more of the beneficial fungi and bacteria then these become the food storage tanks for our plants which helps them become resilient, fight off diseases and in the end produce the nutrient dense food that makes human lives disease-free.
Working with Nature’s Food Cycle : Nature’s food cycle is diversity. Diversity in crops, diversity in soil biology helps maintain and sustain the food cycle from the smallest fungi to us humans at the top of the Food Chain. How soil affects human health : When we push inorganic fertilizer into the soil, it ultimately reaches water and pollutes it. There it forms a dangerous chemical cocktail which leads to hormonal disturbances and major diseases in humans.
A small example is when Fluorides become excessive in water. It leads to Diabetes because, fluorides destroy the hormones required to metabolize sugars. How soil affects animal health : Milk is the most importance source for Calcium and Proteins. If our ruminants are fed with grass growing on polluted soils, only polluted milk is going to come out for us. We need to Refarm the Animal Husbandry sector if we want to better human health. The same goes for the Animal feed, particularly poultry.Animal health comes second only to soil health.
How soil affects the environment : Burning crop stubble or excessive ploughing causes disturbances in Nature. Burning leads to CO2 getting directly into our atmosphere. Ploughing breaks the soil structure disrupting lives and habitats of the micro-organisms. All this leads to a leaking Carbon bucket, a hole in the ozone layer and only adding diseases to into human lives.
Nature’s way is no-till, forests are no-till, Nature’s way is composting, thats how Carbon is stored and re-cycled in the most judicious way enriching human health.Composting at Farm is the only way, the Nature’s way. Composting farm waste is equally important as composting food waste. Our municipalities will not pick our dump forever. One day they will stop picking up our trash and will ask us to either stop using it, recycle or compost it.Its time, we, individually start composting at home – everything that can be – without an excuse.
This will lead to reduction in pollution – land fills end up in our water and that leads to cocktails and a cocktail of untreatable and at times non-detectable diseases in humans and animals. Building soils, health & environment : So if you go back to the Food Web and look at it closely, what you get is :Healthy Fungi make – Healthy Soils – which make – Healthy Food When food is healthy, life will be healthy – both of humans and animal alike.There are enough products available today if we want to :Build diverse Fungi colonies in our soils – add Sujeev Tricho X.
Build the beneficial bacteria in our soils – add Sujeev BM.Use Organic Inputs for our soils – Kelp, Humic, Minerals.Compost fresh manure for immediate use in farms – Sujeev BM.Compost using earthworms – VermibedsCompost our food waste – Bioculum & Sujeev BM. Compost our home waste – Bioculum & Sujeev BM. Make our own compost tea and use as a biofertilizer / bio control agent. There is enough knowledge out there on Google, Youtube, Instagram.
Many schools to learn all this, many trainings being imparted and many seminars being held. All you have to do is follow any one of them or give us a missed call on 022-39560561 to learn : How to make your own compost at home from kitchen and garden waste at 18 paise per Kg.
Make your own fungal / bacterial brews for farms and gardens at under Rs.20/Ltr.Organic Farming, Eco-Farming, Regenerative Agriculture, Permaculture, Nutrition Farming, Sustainable Farming are all ways to Re-Farm our soils, health and environment.
Nature leads the way, our way is only to follow…we need to Refarm & Reclaim our lands, our lives.After all being at the top of the Food Chain, it is our responsibility, isn’t it ?
How Farmers can Save The World by reversing Climate Change ?
There’s been too much focus on CO2 levels of Atmosphere and related pollution problems in recent times than focussing on putting back CO2 into Soil. Agriculture has never been looked at the way it is now and is becoming more important and will be the only reason for reversing Climate Change. We’ve seen pictures of dense smog in New Delhi and Beijing in media and the only thing we do to show our concern is by sharing the pictures on our FB page or Whatsapp.
We simply watch cities and people go down and do nothing about it. To bring about a change, to reverse climate change, we need to first understand the ‘Carbon Cycle’. We can not make new carbon and we need to drill this hard into our heads.
The global carbon cycle is divided into the following major reservoirs of carbon interconnected by pathways of exchange:
1. Atmosphere (as CO2 and methane).
2. Land : Carbon is stored in the soil as humus.
3. Terrestrials : Plants, animals, humans.
4. Oceans.
5. Earth’s interior.
Carbon moves between these storehouses in a phenomenon called The Carbon Cycle. When we talk about CO2 levels, here’s some perspective in terms of numbers :Soils contain roughly 2500 Gt (1 gigatonne = 1 billion tonnes) of organic carbon, making this the largest terrestrial pool. This is 3 times of what is stored in atmosphere 800Gt and 5 times of biotic (560 Gt). Hence, what we do with our soils or rather what we feed our soils becomes a matter of concern in terms of Reversing Climate Change.
The Problem :
1. Thanks to Modern Farming almost 70% of the organic carbon in the soil is now in the atmosphere.
2. Over farming has reduced Soil Organic Matter globally to below 2% from average 5%.
1. Soils whose upper horizons consist of less than 1% organic matter are mostly limited to desert areas and that’s where we are heading.
2. Oceans becoming acidic and temperature rising thus decreasing the ocean’s capacity to absorb CO2 and retain it.
3. GHG being trapped in the atmosphere and the layer is becoming thicker every day.
The Solution : FARMERS! Farmers are the only people who can save the world and reverse Climate Change. They can do this by adopting ‘Farm Composting’. Stubble burning or the deliberate setting fire of the straw stubble that remains after crop has been harvested is a common and an age old practice. The devastating result – Environmental Pollution, release of CO2 into atmosphere and massive health problem to people. While in countries like China, there is a governmental ban on stubble burning, so has India, farmers from Punjab and Haryana burn an estimated 35 million tons waste from their wheat fields after harvesting, as a low-cost straw-disposal practice to reduce the turnaround time between harvesting and sowing for the second (winter) crop. Smoke from this burning produces a cloud of particulates visible in images from space and has produced a “toxic cloud” in New Delhi, resulting in declarations of an air-pollution emergency. What can Farmers do? Farmers need to take up Farm Composting not as a means of Sustainability Agriculture Practice but as a solution to saving the world from pollution, climate change and as a sign of giving back to the Environment.
A few of the many benefits of Farm Composting are : Reduction in waste volume. A rich, natural fertilizer cuts back on use of chemical fertilizers. Improves soil aeration and drainage. Helps control weeds. Decreases the need for costly watering. An easy to use Compost Maker like “KickStart – C” is suitable to compost all kinds of organic waste generated by : Agriculture Farms.Household. Food Processing Units. Agriculture Markets. Farmers Market. KickStart-C is an effective, safe and environmentally sensitive facilitator of aerobic composting of organic waste. It speeds up natural composting process and rapidly converts waste into a rich manure. It preserves the vital nutrients and organic matter in the waste while making it free from pathogens, foul smells and weed seeds. There can be five billion organisms in every teaspoon of compost, involving over 30,000 different species. What better reason to consider Farm Composting than to create A Better Earth for the generations to come and to leave behind a legacy that it was indeed Our Farmers that Saved the World…?
Why IFFCO’s ‘direct 2 farmer’ strategy will double farmer income?
We recently tweeted that according to Forbes – India has 120 million farmers, out of which 30 million use smartphones and have a basic sense of understanding about digital marketplaces. The day is not far where 120 million farmers would be online on a single platform like ICDP accessing better inputs, modern technology or connecting to buyers fetching better price for their produce.
What is more important is that the Indian Farmer is getting digitised which will eventually lead to farm digitisation and a day will come soon when Indian Agriculture would become ‘Precision Agriculture’ than ‘Guessing Agriculture’.
What this means for the Agri Inputs Industry at large :
1. IFFCO’s step to deliver Agri Inputs is a big step for the entire Agri Inputs industry which has been dominated by archaic regulations of state level licensing. This step would eventually lead to making Agriculture “Centre” rather than “State” controlled.
2. IFFCO’s interest into marketing new age Agri Inputs like High Yielding Seeds, BioFertilizers, Biostimulants, Water Soluble Fertilizers, etc means end of road for DAP, Urea and other heavily subsidised fertilizers which only harm the economy, environment and ultimately the farmer.
3. States like Punjab which still donot allow sale of products beyond the list as per FCO 1985 will now open up and look towards Agri Inputs which add real value to farmers in terms of better yields and quality of produce.
4. The Agri Inputs digital platforms currently with (heavily invested) startups which are just a market place for brands and don’t add real value to the industry will open up to manufacturers and industry leaders going ahead with their own e-commerce platforms like Direct2Farmer.com and mobile apps.
5. More Investments in terms of infrastructure, getting the last mile delivery and supply chain efficiency – to and from farmers / rural areas.
6. Massive savings for farmers in terms of cost of Agri Inputs as the middlemen would be taken out eventually. This will lead to a reduced cost of cultivation and more profit for every farmer. More farmers online means better networking, better, faster flow of information and a better economy. ICDP will have 50 million farmers online on their platform by 2020 and this only means : Good for Indian Agriculture, Better for India, and Best for the Indian Farmer.
Top 10 Journalists in ‘Indian Agriculture’ to follow on Twitter
Nothing gets reported as fast as social media today, especially hard hitting news, articles and opinions on Twitter. So if you are not following…
Nothing gets reported as fast as social media today, especially hard hitting news, articles and opinions on Twitter. So if you are not following these Indian journos who write on Indian Agriculture, you are probably reading yesterday’s news.
Follow them today…
1. Rupashree Nanda @rupashreenanda 23.4k followers
2. Vishwa Mohan @vishwamtoi 4939 followers
3. Madhvi Sally @madhvisallyet 4157 followers
4. Abhimanyu Tyagi @tyagiinc 3083 followers
5. Sayantan Bera @sayantanbera 2427 followers
6. Mohd Mustaquim @mustaquimm 1650 followers
7. Sanjeeb Mukherjee @sanjeebm77 1212 followers
8. Hemanta Pradhan @hemantatoi 1183 followers
9. Dnyaneshwar Bijale @dbijale_sakal 956 followers
10. Sutanuka Ghosal @sutanukaget 283 followers
Feel free to add to this list in your comments….
Innovation in Agriculture – The Agri Inputs way.
Block Chain, drones, harvesting robots, artificial intelligence, remote farm operations, etc are some of the new weight bearing words that are…
Block Chain, drones, harvesting robots, artificial intelligence, remote farm operations, etc are some of the new weight bearing words that are usually thrown around when the word “Innovation” in context to agriculture is used. However, if we try to relate these new keywords in context to a marginal farmer in India who owns less than 1acre of land – we hit ground reality. We then realize what Innovation when used in its real terms of its applicability to farmers really stands for.
Innovation simply means “that which works” or “that which is sustainable in the current scenario of things.”For example, we see innovation in the way farm produce is sold from June-2016 onwards from an APMC centric system to a more open one where the farmer now reaches consumers directly. No doubt there still are challenges in this new model but why was this model tweaked ? Simply because the old one had become redundant and there was a desperate need for a new or rather “innovative” / “usable” model to come forward and it has. This innovation has erupted multitude of startups who now connect Farm-2-Fork in almost every city and more will come with time. The new model accepted by one and all has helped farmers to fetch better market prices, establish a direct rapport with consumers, has helped to better understand the end consumer, make changes in sowing program based on market need and finally has led to more transparency in relationship between Farmers & Consumers.
The consumer is now more aware of the product that he /she buys, its origin, who is the farmer, where is the farm and a chance to give a product feedback – which till date was not possible and never imagined.This is Innovation in Agriculture led to sustainability of not just the farmers by opening up an array of possibilities but also a win/win for the consumers.If we take a step back and think about what is a farmer’s #1 problem ? What’s the media in TV, Newspapers, Blogs and social media keep debating and discussing about ? It has always been – fetching the highest price for their produce.
The focus on this single word “price” or “market” has been so maddening that farmers and the government both have stopped thinking beyond higher prices, MSP, subsidies eventually getting brain-dead to think about new ideas or Innovation in the agriculture sector per se.Its time the Agriculture Dept. of the country took a serious look at the archaic & now flawed Fertilizer Act & Pesticides Act. As an agrochemical company if you want to sell fertilizers, you need to be registered to sell in every state, have a local office address, a local warehouse, local VAT number, and finally hiring extra manpower. So imagine if you have a production unit in Maharashtra and want to expand your business by reaching out to farmers in another state – you will need – 10 offices, 10 warehouses,10 VAT registrations, 10 excise registrations – thats 10 times the manpower. The worst is tax returns, excise returns, PT, ESIC, Service Tax, various audits and inspections by various agencies increase 10 fold. Question is – how will the cost of an agro input like a fertilizer you produce or a Pesticide you make be affordable ?? This ultimately increases the cost of cultivation for the farmers and they in turn expect a fair and sustainable price for their produce.The second hindrance, our country certainly lacks infrastructure. Hence, neither an individual farmer reach the consumers neither an individual consumer reach the farmers.
As a company the fertilizer has to reach the farmer – for this a company uses a rather long supply chain model which goes :Company – C&F – Distributor – Retailer – FarmerAt every step there is a cost, a margin that is added by every intermediary to the price of the product which otherwise, if it was sold directly by the Company-to- Farmer would have saved the farmer anywhere between 25 to 50%. This is possible today with the last mile delivery made possible by the flood of courier companies erupted in the last 2 years.So if a farmers saves even 10% in cost of agri inputs – if the company can sell directly to him and get the last mile delivery correct – his cost of cultivation goes down. Then even if he fetches the same price that he present day does, his farm income has still increased and he has more money in his hands. More money in the hands of farmers is more money in 140 million hands to spend. This could change the face of our country forever.This Innovation in Agriculture if brought about by our government, this sector is opened up, if companies are freed from the license raj which till date exists, this ‘Direct Marketing to Farmers’ if allowed, could change the life of every farmer, making agriculture sustainable for him and his generations to come. The Youth will certainly wont quit farming.This one change if done, this innovation if brought about, old model if tweaked, can go long way in doubling a farmer’s income.- Purvish DiwanjiA Passionate Agriculture Enthusiast and also Director @ D2F
Why farmers should buy Agri Inputs from Direct2Farmer.com
We are not a startup. We are manufacturers of Plant Nutrition Products since 1979. Agri input Marketplaces are only modern day retailers.
1. We are not a startup. We are manufacturers of Plant Nutrition Products since 1979.
2. Being a manufacturer, we maintain strict quality standards and we have ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 quality certification.
3. All products covered under FCO 1985 adhere to it’s specifications.
4. We supply to leading brands in India who only repack our products and supply to farmers – Aries, Dayal, Multiplex, Nagarjuna, Coromandel, etc
5. We are serving over 25,000 farmers in Nashik alone since 2013.
6. We sell large volumes of our products in Grapes, Pomegranate and Banana – all of which are exported. Hence quality of Agri Inputs used are every farmer’s concern.
7. We import Water Soluble Fertilizers directly and make our own NPK 191919.
8. We have video testimonials on our YouTube channel for you to check our product performance history for last 5 years.
9. We have set up this e-retail platform to cut out the middlemen so our products can reach farmers directly at much lower prices.
10. We help every farmer win Agriculture by reducing cost of cultivation by upto 50% in many products.Read up “About Us” and “Our Story” on the website and blog for more details or give us a missed call on 022-39560561 to talk to us.
Our Story – Turning B2B to B2F, one farmer at a time.
You can never change the life of a farmer.Well that’s what everyone thinks. We only gasp reading the news of a farmer who committed suicide near your city and the next moment we are back to chatting up on WhatsApp or Facebook about the new restaurant that opened or the new iPhone that was launched.How many of us really do something For the Farmers ? But yes, eventually I did do something :)Born into a family business the words “You are born with a silver spoon” are not tough to come by from everyone you introduce yourself to. Its not wrong to say that joining the family business was an obvious choice for me while friends went for interviews and so I took the plunge into business at 20, just after Graduation. Though that lasted for 1 year exactly till I convinced myself that I need to learn how business is run and done professionally and pursued myself into an MBA.Once back into the business full-time the one thing that kept me going (and still keeps me awake) was my urge to do something For The Farmers. Questions kept coming back to me “How do I stop these suicides, How can I help Farmers make more money?, How do I reach out to them directly ? Can organic food be grown sustainably?”.
We have been manufacturing fertilizers since 1979 and haven been suppliers to many leading brands of India who just repack and sell at 4 to 5x times the price at which we sell to them. They justify it by their spending on people, advertisements, training, seminars, dealer meets etc – but is all of that required ? Some of it yes, some of it is just gimmickery after all.This made me start our retail operations in 2011 in Nashik and Sangli. We used the conventional way that Agri-input retail was done typically with a huge range of products, having a lavish team hired from MNCs, a big marketing spend and appointing C&F, distributors, dealers, retailers etc to ultimately reach the farmer. We kept our product pricing low in comparison to our competitors but then the “middle-men” had a party and our Business Model changed nothing For the farmers. Two years into retail in 2013, we saw a trend – we used to sell on a 12 month credit to the middle-men while the farmer paid them in cash, over the counter. Does it sound fishy ? It definitely sounded to me 🙂
The turning point for me was when a farmer in Nashik tells me why do you want retailers to sell to us, yeh dukaandar kyon chahiye ? just find a way to deliver products efficiently, build an app so I can order and pay online. He said the most important words that day -if you want your business to succeed, do good for the farmers, change their lives, then you have to build a business that’s For the Farmers, you have to be With the Farmers and the only way you can do this is by being selling Direct to Farmers.I decided we need to change how we do business because it was not making any sense to me or to our ultimate beneficiary – The Farmer. More so, it did not answer my nightmare question “How do I stop these suicides, How can I help Farmers make more money?, How do I reach out to them directly ? Can organic food be grown sustainably?”.That’s when we started talking to farmers about their needs, their payment cycle, their expectations from a model that would be called “Direct 2 Farmer”. We got a phenomenal response, I became a Door-2-Door salesman, carrying material in my car, delivering to each individual farmer and guess what – they paid me upfront. And why wouldn’t they ? Farmer were saving at least 30% compared to buying my products from a retail shop nearby.We hired guys to eventually run this door-delivery model and 2 years down the line we setup our e-commerce platform “Direct2Farmer.com” for convenience, transparency, understanding, ease of doing business For the Farmers, to be With the Farmers and more than anything being – Direct 2 Farmers.We sell over 300+ products, from 100ml to several thousand litres and ship from Kashmir to Kanyakumari covering over 20,000 pin-codes. Although we offer Conventional products of all types for mainline farming, we are focussed on “Regenerative Agriculture”. We offer Knowledge, Strategies, Services and Products to scale up this type of farming and ultimately make Regenerative Farming as Mainline.’ Regenerative Agriculture’ is opposite of Conventional one. It is, Good for the Soils,Good for the People,Good for the Planet,Good for the Farmer.We are talking about Farming that’s Good for Everyone…! We will continue to build this portfolio in our endeavours to reach out to the 140+ million farmers of India and make them all “Regenerative Farmers”.
If you are a Farmer and want to become a Regenerative Farmer then please download this simple to understand presentation on “Concepts of Regenerative Agriculture” by clicking on this link:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1o3CUksEW9UVfTdeZtadWi3W5PbPlC7iNTill then…purvish diwanji
For the Farmers, With the Farmers, Direct 2 Farmers
Email : purvish@direct2farmer.com
Twitter : @purvishdiwanjiInstagram
purvishdiwanjiBlog : direct2farmer.com/blog