Regeneration Starts with the Soil on Demo Farms

Community-driven sustainable initiatives and regenerative farming practices are my key areas of interest. Therefore, I have always been keen on working with the farming community. I am excited that an opportunity to work with them has finally come my way through Krishi Janani.

It is a matter of great concern that over time, the farming community in India has lost their once glorious agricultural sovereignty. Farmers in India are dependent on external sources for all farm input such as seeds and fertilizers. Debt has unfortunately become the norm in farming communities in India, triggered mainly by repeated high input costs and other factors. These inputs were once generated out of their own biodiverse ecosystem and were never bought. Open pollinated seeds could be saved and sown the next season or bartered with other farmers. All the waste generated on a farmland was a resource, from dry leaves, crop residues, to farm animal waste.

Regen Farms 1 & 2

Soil Composition: Clay 30%, Silt 30%, Sand 40%

Farm Plots # 1 & 2

Cultivate Healthy Soil

The focus was on a healthy and alive soil, rich in organic matter and teeming with soil life such as microorganisms and nematodes. This was the foundation of a good crop, harvest and profits, year after year without high input costs, making it not only financially sustainable but also socio-environmentally just. In essence, it was a smooth functioning closed loop system that was self-sufficient and catered to the local market.

Krishi Janani aims to bring back seed and food sovereignty into the farming community by demonstrating profitable regenerative agricultural practices on six regen farm plots — three demonstration and three copy-cat training farms. I will be setting up the demo farms while Krishi Janani’s staff will be simultaneously copying the practices on their training farms.

A healthy soil is the first step towards achieving a ‘profitable regenerative agriculture’, which is Krishi Janani’s mission and goal for these exhibition farms.

Regen Farm 3

Soil Compostion: Clay 20%, Silt 45%, Sand 35%

Farm Plot # 3

Components of a Healthy Soil

Healthy soils have three main components — minerals that come from eroded rocks below or nearby, organic matter which is the remains and wastes of plants and animals, and soil organisms that live in the soil. All of these are important for supporting plant growth, soil life, and decomposition. Unhealthy soils can be rejuvenated by adding lots of organic matter to turn it into a healthy soil teeming with life. Organic matter will automatically attract soil microorganisms as it is a cool, moist and conducive environment for them to thrive.

Soil also has texture. It is composed of particles that make its texture, which are categorized by size — sand which is the largest, silt which is smaller, and clay which is the smallest particle. Texture is determined by the relative percentages of each of these particles. We started the demo farm project by doing a simple bottle test to understand each farm’s soil composition. Here is FAO’s guide on how to do simple soil tests: 6.2 How to find the approximate proportions of sand, silt and clay. If the soil is too clayey then it is recommended to add some silt or sand. If the soil is very sandy or rocky, then is recommended to add some clay.

Regen Farm 4

Soil Composition: Clay 25%, Silt 25%, Sand 50%

Farm Plot # 4

Inferences from Demo Farms

In all these demo farms, the farmers have already added river bed silt where it was more clayey or to enhance sandy soil that had some clay, as is the practice in conventional farming. Therefore, based on the inferences from the jar tests, we know that we needn’t add any more silt or sand or clay. We also made visual observations of the soil on each farm. We found all of them to be lacking a healthy top soil which is visually crumbly, moist, dark and well covered with lots of organic matter such as dry leaves and twigs, like on a forest floor.

“Healthy soil is the first step towards achieving a profitable regenerative agriculture”

I greatly look forward to getting started with soil rejuvenation strategies and techniques using permaculture practices in each of the three demonstration farms in the coming weeks. March and April are the leaf fall season in this region. All the demo farm stakeholders are now busy collecting as much leaf litter (a.k.a bio mass) as they can. This is so that we can start our first step towards building a healthy soil by the forest floor method in June. Watch this space for updates on the forest floor method.

Regen Farm 5 & 6

Soil Composition: Clay 60%, Silt 40%, Sand — none

Farm Plots # 5 & 6