This Farmer Is Turning Barren Land Into Food Forests

Slowly, slowly. It's ripening. Oh man! We are very lucky. If you look at the color, it's not ready yet. But it'll be ready in a day. See. Do you see the pattern? See? There's a crack here. That's not going to break. Let it ripen. If you don't let it rip, it'll break. See. Look at the color. See the color. Even the bark has a different color. Do you see a layer inside the stem? It's red. My childhood time, my grandma was the motivating key for me actually. So when she was in 90 plus, she was doing a lot of plantation. So what I realized, when I planted a tree that time, even in my age, instead of just thinking of next generation, in our time itself, we can harvest it. So that way, I decided planting trees when I was in 5th standard. There is a movie in Malayalam, it's called Ividam Sorgamanam. Here is the heaven. When I watched that movie, I decided to build something like that. So that kind of dream we started, I was thinking in 2010. But luckily when I moved to Bangalore, I got an opportunity to work Sanity for May. So then he asked me, he explained about the concept. Then I was able to relate with Ividam Sorgamanam. Then I thought it's a kind of dream we are doing it. And then I moved into this. So this area was completely barren and now it is completely converted into a lush food forest. So whatever you are seeing in the left and right, these are all the crops, which you are getting the yield properly. So we have designed in a very conscious way. It means that the spacing is very important. One mango to another mango, one mango to jackfruit, the coconuts, all has to be properly placed. So then only you will get the yield. Now you can see in my right side, there is avocado, here is soursop, there is some citrus varieties, and we have starfruit. Behind there are malliga mango, alfonso is there, jackfruit is here and mango is here. And we are getting the proper yield. An average of per year we are getting from mango itself. In this small area, 1000 plus kgs of mangoes we are getting it. And like that all the crops we are getting properly. This plant is called Anona reticulata. Actually this is custard apple. Usually people will get confused with the seedafil and seedafil called as custard apple, it is sugar apple. This guy is custard apple. And beauty of this one, again considering two regions, tropical wet and dry, in tropical wet climate normal seedafil will not grow, will not perform well. But here in this dry region, normal seedafil, that is sugar apple, grows very nicely. In tropical wet region, even under the shade, normal, this Anona reticulata grows very nicely. And it gives yield. But that's why what we decided, even you can try to grow near to any of other crops, even this side it's touching to this jackfruit leaf but still fine. The other side gives lot of yield. So these kind of crops you can try in your food forest and without doing much effort you can grow lot of things. The main important thing about maintaining the food forest, how you can effectively utilize every element of the food forest. Main thing is about the mulch. And you can see lot of dry leaves here and there in the field. If you are putting lot of mulch into the ground and that makes lot of difference here. So it's called Lesaria. So looks like it's kind of small. We Carolites have kind of nostalgic feeling when we kind of cultivate this kind of things. So usually people have liking two tastes, sweet and sour. But this will have in between two. So it's not very sweet and it's not even sour. I had a very nostalgic feeling about this. When the childhood time, my mom used to bring, when we walk in the field she used to bring with boiled Lesaria and we will have with Sulaimani, that is called black tea. Black tea with Lesaria is a good combination. So when I came here I thought to kind of bring that nostalgic feeling. When I get that feeling then only I can convey to the people, right. The term food forest means just like converting your space into a edible space, that's it. So that itself, suppose I am planting one mango tree, it's a food forest. But based on your need, your space, you can decide how many types of layers you want it. So this way you have to select, that's it. That's about the food forest. How many layers you want, you can think of adding that. But you should balance it. Like now you can listen lot of bird sound and other pollinators. So you can, you should try something which attracts lot of pollinators. To improve the result you can focus more on companion planting. You can see here, you can see lot of Moringa here, right. So Moringa is one of the best plant which all the farmers in any region, tropical, wet, dry, subtropical, wherever it is possible because Moringa can be grown in almost all the climate conditions. So it's not required much care. You just even, you can propagate through seeds or cuttings, whatever it is. You just need to plant it. And to make your food forest very dense, Moringa is the one of the best plant. And not only just like you know, making very dense, you can harvest lot of leaves. It's a drop and chop method. You can easily bring through Moringa. Plant it and cut it and drop back to the soil. So that is very very important, importance of the biomass, even mangoes. When it blooms, Moringa also start blooming. So it brings lot of pollinators. So that pollinators helps you for, to increase the yield of mangoes. Miyawaki actually is just a method to make micro forest. So it's basically, I always tell that it's needed the place which is having less rainfall and if the land is not much fertile and you want a greenery in a very quicker way. So that case it is highly recommended. Now I am here in this Hosur belt. You can see here, it's not having much rainfall as like you compare with any tropical wet climate. And this is a method, it's a very easy method. You have to take the soil, 1 meter depth you have to take the soil out. And your top soil, you have to keep it separately. And with lot of biomass, you have to fill first layer. So if biomass is not available, you can think of adding coco peat. But it's little expensive. Then put lot of farm yard manure, any of the farm yard manure. Then whatever the top soil which you have kept separately you have to fill it. And you need to make 1 square meter boxes. So 1 square meter you have to plant 4 plants. Okay. That should have different canopies. Big canopies, the tall trees and herbs or shrubs, cover crop, whatever. So there almost all the cases people used to keep the native species. So here in this belt, right here Tintoria, Neem, Pongamia, everything is native. You can add that. Along with that if you want to get some yield, you can think of adding some edible elements like papaya, banana. That is till the canopy grows, you can get the harvest as well. So the method Miyawaki comes into the picture where the plants compete for the light and it grows faster. So maybe kind of survival of the fittest, right. So that way the forest is formed. You just see this one. This is the early stage of a Miyawaki and it's around just like 8 months of growth. And it's a kind of community contribution for the conservation, right. So this is around 10,000 square feet of area. In that one small patch we just dedicated for the conservation. So you can see lot of species here. We have in front of me bamboo is there. Behind there is this guy right here Tintoria. This is very native to this Shulagiri belt and there are neem trees we have. We have hibiscus and we have bird's cherry we have and lot of I also added some guava and till at least to grow this forest we also get some edible item from this actually. So you just see this one how it looks after 3 years. This is a fully grown Miyawaki. We can see the temperature difference when you just go outside and inside. So this way it's not required any kind of effort to make this much of green just like shorter period of time. So that's the beauty of the Miyawaki. So in this small patch we have more than some 150 plants what we planted and it's like you know just in 3 years of time it's like converted like exactly like a forest. Now you can see nearby near to me actually we have hibiscus, we have Indian almond we have Gulmohar and there are many many varieties. We have even jackfruit mango saplings and all like there are some 50-60 species are there in this small Miyawaki. So this actually after this couple of years right you don't need to even water it. So this will self sustain and you don't need to manure it and thus biomass the leaf which is falling from the tree itself act as a fertilizer for this forest. And like very very short period of time there is a tremendous kind of change in this kind of climatic things as well. So basically the intention of building this community to give an awareness to the people to make their own fruit forest. So my role into this actually to give awareness of building fruit forest and also supporting them into making the fruit forest. So in that we are handling many things from seeing the land and reading the condor. From there how to choose the crops which is suitable to this climate. And basically focusing on certain very native to that area and how to get the yield. But actually I would say to the people the people when they work right instead of just like jumping and quitting the job completely at least start parallelly. You utilize their own weekend time or their own free time. Ask them they can just like explore something and experiment something. Then make a system where they can sustain their self. Otherwise what it will happen when they move quickly into this kind of things. In one point of time they will just fed up and they will stop. And I have seen that in many cities. But I worked in 2015 till 2020 I managed both. Then in 2020 after the COVID only I decided okay this is my career. Then I moved completely. People are very very excited to see the diversity. Suppose like that's why I am planning to add lot of different types of crops. So to attract the people and the main thing what I observed they are more into very very good conscious people. They are valuing it a lot. So these excitement as the that is the potential here. We have to identify our own scope. It's not just like only selling the products. Only selling to thinking of getting some revenue from the product. So then we decided adding some agro tourism experience to the people. And we have done three mango festival. Last year it was around 250 mango varieties we exhibited. That way it has to be connected everything. What is this fruit? Mango. This one? This one. Hi good boy. Here we do conduct lot of kids camp and all. So it's not just benefiting me. It's like total benefits goes to all the community. And different creatures like we are making an ecosystem where other than humans they are benefiting. You can see lot of squirrels moving here and lot of birds moving. Same time my kids they will be with me all the time. They will walk around and they will just like show you what are the crops. Now if you ask them they will say this is mango. This is coconut etc. So the same time we are just like you know conveying the same message to everyone. Whoever comes here we consider them as a family. They will walk with me. We will show them everything. While going back they will just like carry something which is really needed now.