Meeting the Indian Fukuoka

Touring the farm with Bhaskarbhai

Soon after I started reading about alternative farming, I came across online conversations and discussions talking about Bhaskar Save’s efforts in Umergam. After reading his open letter to Dr. Swaminathan, of the Indian Green Revolution fame, laying out the reasons for the current crisis amongst farmers, visiting his farm and meeting him became a ‘must-meet’ stop. While planning the Maharashtra-Gujarat leg our travels, we were planning to meet two octagenarians – Datyeji, a noted alterative energy, construction and water resources expert, and Bhaskarbhai. A couple of weeks before we could reach Mumbai, Datyeji passed away. Meeting Bhaskarbhai in this round of travels became all the more important for us even if the meeting would be a short one. Thanks to Bharat Mansatta, of Earth Care Books, and our good friend Sreedevi, we visited Bhaskarbhai’s farm as we started our post Deepavali travels.

Umergam (a.k.a. Umbergam, Umargaon, and variants thereof) is a good five hours from Dadar. It is located in the southern most part of Gujarat and given the low taxes and other incentives for industry in Gujarat, it has seen a steady industrial growth for a few decades now. The area is very fertile – numerous rivers flow down from the hills on the east and into the Arabian Sea in the west. Being a coastal settlement, it is also a reasonable sized fishing township. The growth of factories and industries had been eating into the farming land and a few years ago threatened the fishing community as well when a port was proposed to be built to further ‘develop’ the area. A joint effort by both farmers, fisherfolk, and enivronmentalists resulted in the shelving of the project. I had known about the Anti-port struggle, but unfortunately was not able to plan meeting with Abhabhen and others into the itinerary.

Umbergam receives about the same amount of rainfall as Mumbai does, if not more. Bhaskarbhai’s farm, Kalpavriksh, is located a few kilometers out in the village of Deheri. Bhaskarbhai has been farming here for more than five decades now. He follows natural farming practices and reminded us a few times that it is more like do-nothing farming. Dominated by fruit trees and fed on their biomass, the farm is a beautiful example of how one can make a profit using natural farming techniques. Seeing the rows of carefully spaced composting biomass, water channels and different trees, I could clearly understand why the octagenarian Bhaskarbhai was referred to as India’s Fukuoka!

After the initial few years of watering and bringing in biomass, the fruit trees do require close to zero farming attention. It would take a small effort to maintain the water channels and pile the biomass at the right location every now and then. It was a great experience meeting Bhaskarbhai and hearing from him about how the farm grew to its present state. I wish we could have seen his method at a slightly younger stage … unfortunately, we could not visit Sanghavi Farms.