Conversation with Teddy — an Innovation Specialist and Now a Full Time Urban Farmer
From an Innovation Specialist in a Global IT firm to now a full time farmer — What made you make that shift?
I was mainly getting back to my roots. As a farmer, the level of degradation that we have influenced in the environment, stares at you directly in the eye. After decades of modern agriculture practices, using chemical fertilisers and pesticides we had gotten to a point when even catching a glimpse of a butterfly became a rare sight. It was time to do something to change things for the better.
What are you now doing to make things better?
The first decision I made was to drastically reduce the use of chemical fertiliser and totally eliminate the use of pesticides.
I have set a three year time frame where the emphasis is rejuvenation of the soil health and overall fertility and not so keenly on yields and profits.
I have started with crops that are high on foliage such as banana, tapioca, and green manure crops such as cow pea and sun hemp to add bio-matter to the soil. I also use traditional concoctions to dose the soil, to promote beneficial soil micro-organisms, which are the mainstay of a fertile soil. Apart from the farm I also cultivate an organic home garden for vegetables and fruits.
Gardening is one of the most pleasurable activities one can be involved in. It helps one de-stress, and at the same provides healthy, tasty, nutritious vegetables to consume. It’s a feel good activity that is rewarding to both the body and the mind.
However, the challenges here are in many ways more demanding. The failure rate is high and I am still learning through trial and error.
What were some of the pain points you face with the home garden, especially when you first started?
Whereas with farming the cultural practices of growing are more or less well defined, with the home garden there was a lot to learn. Vegetable plants as a rule are more delicate and sensitive.
Optimal watering is critical during the seedling stage. Both too much and too little water, or a delay in watering by even half a day, affect the survival rate of seedling adversely.
Compost had to be developed for growing the plants, and I had to learn the right way to do it, over time. I had to improvise pots and containers for growing. There were doubts regarding size of container, the number of plants, when to grow what, and more.
Vegetable plants are also more disease prone, and since one typically has a number of varieties in a vegetable garden the number of diseases and pest attacks are also many. There is nothing more disillusioning than to see a plant wither and die due to some disease or a pest attack, that was not diagnosed rightly, or on time, and for which the right treatment was not provided. There were even times I almost gave up. Thankfully, I could reach out to interest groups on Facebook and other forums, for help regarding pests and diseases and this made a big difference.
How does Greenopia address those pain points? To what extent?
Greenopia attempts to be a plug and play mode of starting to garden. The smart pot eliminates one of the main pitfalls to growing plants, which is optimal and timely watering.
The pot also helps monitor basic parameters such as adequate lighting, soil moisture and soil mineral composition, which are crucial parameters for successful growing. This information can be shared with fellow growers in the Greenopia network through the Greenopia App, to seek expert advice to fix problems.
Apart from the pot, and the App, the Greenopia website will help the grower source the seeds, the growing medium; provide advice on location-specific and season-specific planting; and provide advice on a number of how-to’s and what-to-do’s. The pot, the App network, and the website information will all combine to reinforce the confidence to grow and to influence the success factor to a very large extent.
You are past those typical growing hurdles. How would you use Greenopia?
Greenopia will help me do what I already do, much more easily. I can now scale up much faster, and manage aspects such as watering with less effort. Greenopia also brings a seamless connection between my activity as a grower and the community of growers that will help me exchange information and resources much more effectively.
Why did you decide to be part of this initiative?
When I first heard of the initiative, and having already experienced home gardening first hand, I was instantly convinced about its utility and potential. I now feel a deep urge to promote this initiative and to share the pleasures and rewards of having one’s own home garden.
How do you see the evolution curve for Greenopia? What will be some of the key challenges in walking that path?
I believe that an intensive form of home-grown vegetable cultivation is the way forward to create an eco-friendly, economical, and a healthy alternative to market bought vegetables. Greenopia intends to be a visionary initiative that will promote large scale adoption of self-grown vegetable consumption country-wide and world-wide through leveraging the use of technology in an effective way. Greenopia will eventually extend to facilitate communal models of growing in addition to individual growing.
Greenopia is a scalable, flexible system that lends itself for distributed expansion and growth in an efficient manner. Greenopia firstly makes it easy to grow. Secondly, it improves the success criteria for growing. And thirdly, it makes the activity of growing a shared communal event, where knowledge will be shared, surpluses exchanged, and social interactions encouraged around a benign and pleasurable activity which is gardening.
Greenopia is an imaginative experiment that addresses a key need in our contemporary urbanised, fast paced lifestyles.
Promoting successful adoption will require that we address issues that occur, diligently and to fix them through innovation. Greenopia is an eco-system in itself, of people and suppliers and space and plants, and the eco-system will need to be nurtured through a hi-touch approach. There will need to be a continuous effort to reduce cost of the kit and include features to make it even more effective and efficient. Eventually Greenopia will also need to explore, suggest and facilitate new models of using common spaces and shared flexible ownership patterns.
From the editor: Greenopia is currently crowd-funding in Wishberry. You can pre-order Greenopia Smart pot to get started with the smart growing experience — link here. Thank you
