[audioholic]

We stopped cultivation because of the exact reasons mentioned above in all your posts. Firstly, the various ration schemes and benefits made the labourers lazy. And the labourers had small pockets of land which they sold and made some money. To add to all this mess, the SEZ that came up near Narasapura,Kolar led to all kinds of people getting jobs in Honda, its ancillary companies in the initial days. All of them are contract jobs and they get a fixed salary which attracted younger lot.

Of course it was a good thing for them. But lately the management has become a lot stricter and they are facing severe pressure. So people have started coming back to their lands and resuming farming in whatever land that is left.

OTOH we have two full time caretakers who take care of both the house as well as the lands. They manage to get done middle aged labourers in case we have work to be done. And no need to even speak about their punctuality. Its just horrible.

This trend is one of the causes for price rise and the high price of rations. Worried where it will head too. Lots of lands are being purchased for the sake of investment and its is left idle. The last thing that is in our hands is to force them to work. That at least has hekped us get some small time crops like Ragi, etc to be grown just for the sake of not leaving the land uncultivated. A little political background helps in this regard The labourers dare not play with us.

[maddy42]

Originally Posted by condor

not just VFM .. this scheme has screwed up things. It has become difficult to find & keep permanent staff too. Though a permanent person would be helpful if you have sufficient size of land & sufficient work. The after effects of that scheme will be felt for decades to come. The people who implemented are laughing away, because it never affected them. And un-doing it - is it possible at all ?

It is difficult for a small land holder who wants to start off. Its easier for a guy with deep pockets and a job in the city and farming is his past time to pay big moolah and get his land worked on. The other guy would need to wait for the labor to get free and then maybe some work will get done.

The videos on this channel is awesome! Does anyone have such a farm here?
http://www.youtube.com/user/SaskDairy

Maddy

[addyhemmige]

Originally Posted by audioholic

Finally got the Mangoes picked........... These are the most organic mangoes that anyone can get. Zero fertiliser, pesticide or ripening agents. Even the birds and monkeys get a fair share

@audioholic, those mangoes look really good. Kudos for taking the organic way of farming.

Originally Posted by maddy42

Coming to my query: For all farmers or people into cultivation hows the scene with Labor in your location? How do you manage them, what are the facilities offered to them and is there acute shortage? How are the wages like in your area?

Sorry for being very negative but the free rice and free tv mixer schemes have made running a farm very expensive.

Do let me know any suggestions both positive and negative.

In our area, the normal wage is around Rs.160-170 per day for a female labourer (heNNALu as we say in kannada) and Rs.200-220 for male labour (ganDALu). There are a few company estates around the place which pay more than the normal wages for this area, but they do know how to extract the last ounce of work from them. This has made many workers return to the privately owned plantations where there is relatively less pressure. And there is the commission which has to be given to the jeep/van drivers who offer to get labor from nearby villages.

Apart from this we give small loans (again interest free and mostly to regular workers).

We do get labor, but it is very inconsistent. Apart from the permanent employees, it is very difficult to get labor regularly. During the coffee picking season, we get labor mostly from North Karnataka and from Tamil Nadu as well.

Originally Posted by condor

not just VFM .. this scheme has screwed up things. It has become difficult to find & keep permanent staff too. Though a permanent person would be helpful if you have sufficient size of land & sufficient work. The after effects of that scheme will be felt for decades to come. The people who implemented are laughing away, because it never affected them. And un-doing it - is it possible at all ?

This is a big problem across all agricultural sectors. These government schemes although supposed to benefit the poor are actually making people lazy. They have actually taken away the incentive to work from the people.

Picture this scenario, a male labourer works for a week and earns Rs.1000 (assuming it is a 5 day week and Rs 200 per day). This fellow gets free rice as per govt scheme and he spends Rs.200-300 to buy other provisions. So now they have enough food to eat for the next 2 weeks. His wife too works for 5 days and earns Rs. 750 (Rs.150 * 5days). So now, they have surplus money to spend (or save). When there is surplus money why will they break their backs and work? So, the next week, both the husband and wife do not go to work. This is a cycle and after the money is exhausted, they come back to work.

When such things happen with the majority of labor, it becomes very difficult to manage. When there is work, there is a shortage of labor and when there is little work, everybody is ready to work

Originally Posted by maddy42

It is difficult for a small land holder who wants to start off. Its easier for a guy with deep pockets and a job in the city and farming is his past time to pay big moolah and get his land worked on. The other guy would need to wait for the labor to get free and then maybe some work will get done.

[maddy42]

Originally Posted by audioholic

We stopped cultivation because of the exact reasons mentioned above in all your posts.

Originally Posted by addyhemmige

In our area, the normal wage is around Rs.160-170 per day for a female labourer (heNNALu as we say in kannada) and Rs.200-220 for male labour (ganDALu). There are a few company estates around the place which pay more than the normal wages for this area, but they do know how to extract the last ounce of work from them.

Sigh! Seems to be a problem in every place.

Am curious to know if anybody here has implemented drip irrigation on their farm? Is there a way you can send fertilizers through this too or it is limited with water only?

Also a lot of talk goes out for Israeli farming technology. Does anybody have any links or sources from which one could get info. They have turned a desert into farms!
Maddy

[audioholic]

Originally Posted by maddy42

Sigh! Seems to be a problem in every place.

Am curious to know if anybody here has implemented drip irrigation on their farm? Is there a way you can send fertilizers through this too or it is limited with water only?

We got drip irrigation mate. One of the ways we thought of reducing the dependency on labour. We implemented drip irrigation on a two acre piece of land. It is fed by the borewell pump directly and is doing a good job from around a year or so. Regarding fertiliser I am not sure. The water comes from the pump to a gravel filter and then goes to the pipes which have control valves for every row of pipe. The government does offer a subsidy, which is again not so easy to get

[maddy42]

Do you folks do coffee pulping or is it just Cherry? Curious as our area is all robusta so the Cherry is the only method done.

Originally Posted by audioholic

We got drip irrigation mate. The government does offer a subsidy, which is again not so easy to get

Thanks for the info mate! Sigh life of a farmer.
Is this one from Jain irrigation? Its very tough and difficult to convince a age old coffee farmer like my dad to adopt this. Just had our house area adopted to rain water harvesting so need to take these plans one at a time

Think i ended up driving some future enthusiasts away with my queries .

Maddy

[condor]

Originally Posted by maddy42

Am curious to know if anybody here has implemented drip irrigation on their farm? Is there a way you can send fertilizers through this too or it is limited with water only?

You can dispense fertilizer too, but I dont have the details. The mix is placed in tank in-line, and then pushed out.

[abirnale]

Originally Posted by maddy42

Am curious to know if anybody here has implemented drip irrigation on their farm? Is there a way you can send fertilizers through this too or it is limited with water only?

My part of the world (farms, of course) have short rainfall than all other surrounding areas. So drip irrigation is mandatory. We have used it for grapes as well as sugar canes! What we do is, use soluble fertilizers in a container attached to line inputs on each row and control the flow of water through it. But there are other solutions as well - you can have a larger tank at the main valve and pass the water through that. In the tank obviously you will put your soluble fertilizers. The only issue with this is - you can't control amount of fertilizers on every row if you have multiple crops and combinations of creepers etc on rows.

And there must be new solutions from the irrigation equipment manufacturers itself. I am getting in touch with my resource to get you exact answers. Hope that will help you.

EDIT:
Some important links you may want to indulge into -

• Fertigation Systems and Chemigation Details here.
• Drip Irrigation Systems
• Drip Kit
• And a demo from their youtube channel is here.

[gkrishk]

We stopped cultivation because of the exact reasons mentioned above in all your posts. Firstly, the various ration schemes and benefits made the labourers lazy. And the labourers had small pockets of land which they sold and made some money. To add to all this mess, the SEZ that came up near Narasapura,Kolar led to all kinds of people getting jobs in Honda, its ancillary companies in the initial days. All of them are contract jobs and they get a fixed salary which attracted younger lot.

Of course it was a good thing for them. But lately the management has become a lot stricter and they are facing severe pressure. So people have started coming back to their lands and resuming farming in whatever land that is left.

OTOH we have two full time caretakers who take care of both the house as well as the lands. They manage to get done middle aged labourers in case we have work to be done. And no need to even speak about their punctuality. Its just horrible.

This trend is one of the causes for price rise and the high price of rations. Worried where it will head too. Lots of lands are being purchased for the sake of investment and its is left idle.

The agricultural scene in Kerala is a prime example of all that has gone wrong with farming here. The very word Kerala means land of coconuts and coastal Kerala used to be a beautiful landscape of paddy fields and coconut gardens. The farming homesteads of old ("tharavads") were self sufficient units growing all the grains, vegetables and fruits they needed for sustenance.
Social and land reforms by progressive kings and elected governments created a more-or-less equitable distribution of property and wealth (that is a great achievement) but left the people with a contempt for manual labour. No Keralite now likes to work in a field or climb a coconut tree- its infra dig.We import labourers from other states now.
Over the last quarter century paddy farming and coconut cultivation became economically unviable so that fields were rapidly converted to housing plots and shopping malls. The cost of all this is unprecedented disintegration of the Kerala environment. It is sad to see that construction and conversion of farmland for other uses is rampant all over India now.
We need to develop a sense of concern for our land and flora and equally importantly, we all need to develop a feeling that any and all kinds of work carries its own dignity and purpose.

Sorry for going a bit

[addyhemmige]

Originally Posted by maddy42

Do you folks do coffee pulping or is it just Cherry? Curious as our area is all robusta so the Cherry is the only method done.

Thanks for the info mate! Sigh life of a farmer.
Is this one from Jain irrigation? Its very tough and difficult to convince a age old coffee farmer like my dad to adopt this. Just had our house area adopted to rain water harvesting so need to take these plans one at a time

Think i ended up driving some future enthusiasts away with my queries .

In 2012, we converted all our coffee into Robusta with only about 5% Arabica remaining. The Arabica crop was parchmented and the whole Robusta crop was sold as cherry then, but this year we changed our pulper and about 80% of the Robusta crop was parchmented with the rest sold in Cherry form.

Drip irrigation for coffee? How feasible is it given that the density of coffee plants is more compared to other crops like mango, sapota etc?

Originally Posted by abirnale

My part of the world (farms, of course) have short rainfall than all other surrounding areas. So drip irrigation is mandatory. We have used it for grapes as well as sugar canes!

You have used drip irrigation for sugarcanes? Grapes I can understand, but is it done for sugarcane? How feasible is it? I mean to ask, if the water is left out to each stalk or a certain block/cluster?

I'm not at all versed with the cultivation of sugarcane, so please pardon my noob question

[maddy42]

Originally Posted by condor

You can dispense fertilizer too, but I dont have the details. The mix is placed in tank in-line, and then pushed out.

Thank you!!!

Originally Posted by abirnale

My part of the world (farms, of course) have short rainfall than all other surrounding areas. So drip irrigation is mandatory. We have used it for grapes as well as sugar canes! What we do is, use soluble fertilizers in a container attached to line inputs on each row and control the flow of water through it. But there are other solutions as well - you can have a larger tank at the main valve and pass the water through that. In the tank obviously you will put your soluble fertilizers. The only issue with this is - you can't control amount of fertilizers on every row if you have multiple crops and combinations of creepers etc on rows.

And there must be new solutions from the irrigation equipment manufacturers itself. I am getting in touch with my resource to get you exact answers. Hope that will help you.

EDIT:
Some important links you may want to indulge into -

• Fertigation Systems and Chemigation Details here.
• Drip Irrigation Systems
• Drip Kit
• And a demo from their Youtube channel is here.

Thanks for the links. Already in it. Will be helpful if not for now for later and for everyone out here.

Originally Posted by gkrishk

The agricultural scene in Kerala is a prime example of all that has gone wrong with farming here.

It is sad to see that construction and conversion of farmland for other uses is rampant all over India now.
We need to develop a sense of concern for our land and flora and equally importantly, we all need to develop a feeling that any and all kinds of work carries its own dignity and purpose.

Sorry for going a bit

Buddy this is similar to whats happening in every area. In mangalore its more pricey to get people to climb coconut trees. The tree climbing machine is hard to figure out.

In coorg i had my neighbour cut all his huge trees which provided dense shade in his estate as they are difficult to manage and he plans on replacing them with silver oaks. Well thats the kind of logic your dealing with!

Rice cultivation as a single crop is going to be a tough sell.

Hope the farmer gets his due.

Maddy

[gkrishk]

Buddy this is similar to whats happening in every area. In mangalore its more pricey to get people to climb coconut trees. The tree climbing machine is hard to figure out.

Here in Trivandrum coconut pickers are a dying breed. Only older generation pickers are there as no one wants the job any more. Dried nuts and leaf fronds fall from the trees. You have to walk (and park your car) carefully lest a coconut falls on your head!

[maddy42]

Originally Posted by addyhemmige

In 2012, we converted all our coffee into Robusta with only about 5% Arabica remaining. The Arabica crop was parchmented and the whole Robusta crop was sold as cherry then, but this year we changed our pulper and about 80% of the Robusta crop was parchmented with the rest sold in Cherry form.

Drip irrigation for coffee? How feasible is it given that the density of coffee plants is more compared to other crops like mango, sapota etc?

Oh cool thanks for that info. Any reason for the shift in crop? And could you help me out here with the kind of pulpers used and whats the pulping process like? In coorg majority is Cherry and the trouble is if you question anybody the first reply you get is it needs SO MUCH WATER and you would need to treat it and also the machines are so pricey.

Drip irrigation for coffee would be an effort but this time in my visit there was this farm which started on a small scale(4acres) where there is a water outlet for each plant. Turns out its about 40 k per acre with some years of life for the system. Not sure of yield increase but i really hope there is atleast a 25% increase

Also there was a mention that you can get the coffee flower by watering the roots instead of sprinking(but this is not confirmed news so dont hold me to it). Told by my uncle who tends to exagerate.

Maddy

[abirnale]

Originally Posted by addyhemmige

You have used drip irrigation for sugarcanes? Grapes I can understand, but is it done for sugarcane? How feasible is it? I mean to ask, if the water is left out to each stalk or a certain block/cluster?

Yes, you can use it. There are different methods of planting sugar cane. The water zone areas are expected to use the lane system - canes running continuously. The ones that witness less rain, you can plan canes in bunc at a distance. So its like every make a marking of 2x2ft and at the intersections plant a bunch. (Actually bury the cane eyes , sorry, couldn't find right word). And they lay the drip such that every outlet is at these intersections. So the cane is in cluster at these planted places where exactly the drip outflow is. That should be all.

Originally Posted by addyhemmige

Drip irrigation for coffee? How feasible is it given that the density of coffee plants is more compared to other crops like mango, sapota etc?

Ideally, with this kind of plantation, sprinklers are ideal. And the very reason as you stated is density of plants. Drip is good for anything that is distantly placed, else sprinklers are ideal. And of course this is all related to water quantity primarily. Places where you grow coffee, has generally enough rains.

[abirnale]

Talking of Drip Irrigation - here is an example of Drip being implemented for a rice field!

Link to Article

Attaching the PDF copy of the page print to avoid broken links

RiceDrip.pdf
Source: Jain Irrigations website blog.

So keeping this in mind, there is no reason why this can't be done for coffee!