Closed cubicles to Open gardens — Journey of a Techie to a Farmer

Join Hemal Patel as he talks about how he decided to break away from the rat race to a secured life and fell in love with farming!

Shaastra, IIT Madras
Nov 6 · 7 min read

We live in an age where people constantly run behind ‘success’ often losing serenity on the way. While most want to break away from the monotony, not many are daring enough to get away from the illusionary ‘security in life’.

Hemal Patel was yet another man who felt the same. Being confined in a cubicle and suffocated by deadlines as a computer engineer, deep inside Hemal yearned to be amidst nature.

As a part of Shaastra 2020’s initiative: The Inner-View, we take you through the path he treaded to break free and start to make a positive impact on the ecology and people’s lives by educating them on organic farming.

Draw my Life — Hemal Patel

1. You are a techie who quit our normal tech job and chose to farm instead. At what point in your life did you realize farming was the one you wanted to do?

It began gradually in 2010 when I was in a software engineer.

Working every day in a software company on a computer was a little bit monotonous. And actually, it was not that much fun. It’s like doing the same thing every day, right? Although the technology keeps on changing, it’s the same thing that you are going to do — go to the office, work on the computer, and finish your job according to deadlines and so on. Back then when we were kids, we didn’t want to do homework. So this life was mostly the same — where we are continuously doing some homework and finishing it and getting an appreciation that you are doing your homework nicely. Here, you’re getting some money.

We started to do farming in the city and started close to our lawn. This was in 2011 and going along with my IT job. On weekends, I used to start doing some gardening in the city only. And it started to become more and more fun.

Finally in 2013, my last year in IT, I started to intensively do farming in a small piece of land along with my wife. And we discovered life like this is exciting!

2. How were your first days during the transition? Was your family supportive of you leaving a lucrative job at a young age?

Well… financially it’s a risk only because you have a drop in your income. But anyways, IT job is not stable health-wise — you work for longer hours and then there are a lot of times you lose your immunity. You earn a lot but then you are going to spend it on medicines and a lot of other things.

Well, here you are close to nature so you don’t earn much — you gradually step up, won’t start with a hefty package. Things take time.

You know you start earning money, every year there is a gradual increase.

So initially, the parents won’t be supportive of this. That’s why we did not even declare to them that I quit my job. But then, I used to express how I enjoyed farming. They are farmers only, which was why they used to discourage that this is not lucrative.

But then we were on the other side of the coin — we’re not talking about chemical farming, we’re talking about organic farming. This is a new phenomenon worldwide, where people are excited to try it out, enjoy it and even make some money out of it.

We tried for three years and started making money and then we declared to them after almost three years of genuine work that we made money.

All these times, my wife was very supportive of this venture.

3. After the transition, you created this startup called Urban Soil. What’s the mission behind it?

The major motive is that everyone should be able to connect to nature and live like a child. And after that, they can earn in their life.

When you are in a garden and you make a mistake, nature is not going to punish. Unlike a technical job where you are bound to get some retort or maybe even get fired. As a child, you never used to experience this. Life was fun and peaceful. A child is very creative — when not pressurized, he or she is going to make it the best out of it.

I still remember the childhood days I spent on my grandfather’s farm. I was the third standard at that time. And I grew my first crop, which I saw in my life at a young age was moved!

It was a very small farm, and the output was not substantial. But, the crops I grew seemed to have life in them!

If we can bring that kind of thing in our current life, won’t it be great? Happiness, ultimately, is prosperity — this is what I experienced in my last four years.

And isn’t it wonderful when you are enjoying your life creating a wonderful future for everyone?

As a part of Urban Soil, we have workshops for adults. These are short 2-day ones, each being for 4 hours. These workshops mainly focus on gardening and composting. These can be followed by a person who has almost 0 knowledge of farming or growing crops.

One can master growing at least 20 vegetables in the next one year. And during the journey, I stay in touch with them through WhatsApp and guide them till they have beautiful gardens in their homes.

4. How can organic farming make a livelihood for home-makers?

We have inspired home-makers to become partners of organic farmers.

Their (organic farmers) major challenge is that they don’t have any logistics or marketing.

The conventional market has rules and guidelines only for chemical farmers. If they go to the market, no one will give them respect for the step they have taken to improve biodiversity. Thus, they won’t get the results for what they have done.

Home-makers can make a market for such farmers. They, living in urban societies with 300 to 400 flats, can easily organize a market inside their colony. The target is also on point — people these days don’t have the time to go into the regular market and want something in their doorstep.

The home-maker will just have to invest her time in this. Tell the farmer to bring the vegetables and certain hours during the weekdays, maybe once every Wednesday and Saturday. So, we have effectively converted a homemaker into an entrepreneur and are helping the farmer as well.

5. India was once called the land of farmers. But currently, there’s a significant drop in people taking up farming as such. Even the parents who did farming are asking their children to go outside and take a normal engineering job. So why do you think there is such a mentality?

So if you see it was such a nation, where my father and grandfather were into farming, and enjoy. But what happened is the change of generation. My father was born during the industrial revolution period in India. And then we created an urban lifestyle following the footsteps of England. So if my father had seen as a child or this new lifestyle, he wanted to experience something urban.

So definitely wanted me to leave behind this farming.

My grandfather was happy in his own time doing organic farming but my father wanted to try out this chemical farming which gave better results instantly. We started chemical farming initially, it even increased our income. My grandfather was not in that support, because he knew that in the long term this will not work. And this way, we started to embrace chemical farming.

But what’s the status now? This method is not yielding any profit, for it had stripped the soil of its fertility. My farm soil is not getting replenished. And just adding chemicals. But in chemical farming, what is the principle, you don’t nourish the soil. You just keep adding more and more. So now it’s not a lucrative way for the new generation to live on.

This is the major reason why there’s a downward shift in people taking up farming.

6. How is the market receiving the organic produce? You know, being 10–20 rupees higher than the conventional produce. Do you see the acceptance improving in the coming years?

When I started buying organic in 2010, I remember only three out of ten people were convinced to buy organic, seven were not ready. But that was in 2010, in 2019 it’s a completely different story.

Looking at the trends of today, there are different kinds of buyers — only a few want to go and pick the vegetables, while most just want to save their time. So if we bring in the technology in organic farming, the way we have done into conventional, I’m sure that seven people out of 10 people would want to buy organic.

Also, people’s average income has increased dramatically. The middle-class people are also ready to spend the money on something that’s slightly more expensive, but healthier. If you buy potatoes in the conventional market, they’re available for 10 to 20 rupees here someone would be selling for 30 to 40 rupees. But those are organic potatoes and you will be healthy. In the long run, you are not spending on medicines.

So in 10 years from now, organic produce would have completely replaced the conventional produce. I’ve seen this happening in the UK. They have a shelf right beside the regular produce to keep the organic apples and organic strawberries. And they sell it at one and a half times the regular price. Yet people are buying these in huge numbers.

It’s a gradual shift, but the change is certain.

Shaastra, IIT Madras

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