Alley Cropping System | Gliricidia plot:392BB [Jun – Oct 22]

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The natural diet of bovines largely comprises wild grass, tree leaves and weeds. Increased domestication, however, has motivated farmers to rely on grain-based diets, as it makes it easier to maintain large herds of cattle and harvest higher yields of produce, be it meat or milk. Grains, in comparison to grass, are easy to store, to purchase in bulk, as well as to produce. Second-grade-broken grains are often easily available (read: cheaper) for dairy.

Annapurna dairy currently relies on grains, i.e. millet-based concentrate as well as home-grown fodder and paddy straw. While fodder (greens) is much more nutritional and natural to cattle, the quantity needed for consumption is relatively higher. To grow such quantities, one would require advanced pastoral management (optimum grazing), water, land, as well as protection of the land from other wild vegetarians.

The often asked question to us is how one farm off 135 acres, the answer is to make a system that serves the need of sustaining an organic farm.

A closer look at gliricidia 323BB will help to understand this better as it aims to sustain the rotational fodder for the dairy along with irrigated food crops, such as green gram, late sesame and corn.

For years, Annapurna has been cultivating the most outlying pieces (15-20 acres) of the land under dryland gliricidia plantations to produce fodder and biomass. These gliricidia were originally planted as a dryland crop to biomass for composting-mulching, and nitrogen-fixing to the soil, create organic fodder for the dairy along with far-off land protection and erosion. Food crops used to be grown between the lines of gliricidia as well.

In the month of June 2022, with the help of increased rain harvesting capacity over the years, we prepared alleys (spacing) between gliricidia to cultivate fodder under irrigated conditions. This plot was prepared by shredding down gliricidia alleys to provide the biomass for the first rotation with fodder crop 一 Phaseolus Tribola and perennial fodder Sorghum.

This system was visualized by Tomas years ago as a mean to reduce yearly compost input (creating biomass | organic matter). In the coming season, we intend to observe if the plot will be able to sustain itself with the biomass created from the gliricidia and legume crop rotation. This plot will further rotate into food crops and eventually into a fruit plantations; banana.

The aim is to slowly move towards minimizing the reliance on millet grains to having the herd predominantly fodder (grass)-fed while extending the land under long-term cultivation. As of today we harvested about a ton of leguminous fodder – Phaseolus Tribola and test cut of the perennial fodder sorghum from 392bb.

Alley Cropping System*

Hedgerow intercropping, also referred to as Alley cropping system is a type of strip cropping or agroforestry practice, in which fast growing trees and shrubs are established on the arable lands and annual food or forage crops cultivated in the “alleys” between the hedgerows. The shrubs or trees are usually planted in rows of 2.0 m to 6.0 m apart, with crops cultivated between rows. The trees or shrubs managed as hedges are pruned periodically during cropping phases to prevent shading of companion crop and the pruning applied to the soil as green manure and / or mulch. This improves the organic matter status of the soil besides proving nutrients, especially nitrogen. This system also creates a more favorable microclimate for crops by shielding them from drying winds. Trees or shrubs and crops components are managed to be complimentary rather than competitive.

Salad Bar and Green Manure for the paddy season 2022-23

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Irrigated salad bars/green manure are relatively easy depending on the monsoon each year. At Annapurna, we receive an ample monsoon (summer and winter) and sometimes, even a cyclone at times. As a result, rain water harvest ponds have more  capacity to sustain the rice, orchards, and fodder, because of which we sow early harvested paddy fields to raise an irrigated salad bar. Green manures such as Phaslous Tribola and Sesbania Speciosa, (dryland specials) establish robust overgrowing of the weeds under irrigated conditions. 

The CO43 paddy harvested early in January and the Annapurna paddy fields stretching up to 7.7 of the total 20 acres, raised with early green manure and irrigated since the good monsoon last season, serve as a grazing ground for the dairy during the dry season. Cows spend an hour grazing in a  rice plot and get daily rotated into another field. The idea is to irrigate the fields enough to establish the crop, graze the cattle swiftly, and allow green manure to bounce back up with the irregular summer showers to plow it back in for paddy preparation. The remaining paddy fields are grown and managed as the dryland salad bar for the dairy and green manure for the paddy. Productivity of these plots varies from year to year depending very much on the summer monsoon rains.

In an exact opposite scenario, we rely on the summer rain to germinate the green manure. In such instances,  we look at rain predictions and then sow the green manure. Some years it rains several centimeters high, which can replicate the same result as when we rely on the irrigated system. This year, however, the rains were short and scattered. 

This brings us the first heavy flush of weeds, predominantly the Trianthema decandra L, which is locally known as spinach and is edible for cattle in regulated quantities. Under the lush short canopies of this weed, we have our green manures germinated. It remains dormant without ample sun and moisture and waits for the weeds to wither out after its 45-day life cycle. This grown sea of this dominant weed also falls prey to caterpillars (moth species unidentified) and gets eaten away making way for the sunlight to reach the ground and the dormant green manure finally synthesizes back to life.

Dairy news.

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Left: Farewell Welli – Right: mixing the cow feed

This is in continuation of the blog from June 9 about our deliberations of retired animals.

Welli died a few days ago. She was in her 20th life year. In her last days she could not walk and eat anymore and developed some other complications.

This was the point where we decided to sedate her and let her go. We buried her on the farm.

This week we prepared a new cow feed concentrate mix. Once every 4-6 weeks we prepare a new feed mix consisting mostly of millets and animal grade products of our grain processing. Few products we have to buy on the market in Pondicherry to complete the mix.

The millet (pearl-, foxtail-, finger- and kodo millet) is collectively purchased, mostly through Aurogreen (a farm in Auroville) who buys large amounts in the season at millet harvest time when the grain is cheaper.

This is the only way to be sure that we get the best feed. Millet are cleaned and milled into flour at Annapurna itself so we are sure there is no adulteration and no substitutes and taste makers are added. It is also the only way to put in maximum organic ingredients.

Annapurna farm’s vision is to reduce the concentrate feed and increase fodder for the animals over time. This year we are preparing more infrastructure to be able to irrigate more area; this will enable us to produce more fodder throughout the year. The process to move away from concentrate grain- based feed is very slow and we have to see how far we can push it. The feed has a big influence on the milk yield and the farm needs the milk to be able to break even in the current economical reality.

Cow herd.

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Today the cow herd is grazing lazily in one of the paddy fields which has green manure plants growing in it. Our 20 acres of paddy land is divided in over 100 plots which are bunded and leveled individually. We have around 40 fields with lush green manure growing in it right now. The rest of the fields are all composted, plowed and waiting for a good summer rain to be re-plowed and sown with green manure seeds.

We had a very long, drawn-out monsoon this year ending only mid January; that is a month longer than usual. On top of that we had a very good rain in the 3rd week of February. We also had some light showers in May and June.

Because of this we could establish a leguminous green manure crop on over 7 acres of the rice land.
We are reaping the benefits right now because the herd of cows have a wonderful area to graze on.
Our rice plots are around 500-700m2 and the animals graze for approx. 1 hour per day in a plot to fill themselves with rich fodder. Since they graze a short time only parts of the plants will be eaten and the crop will recover after a good rain. Like this the cows have rich fodder and we have a nice green manure in September/October which will be plowed in to feed the next rice crop.
We use a mix of Pillipisaru (Phaseolus triloba) and Sesbania speciosa for this purpose. These two kinds do well in our heavy black clay soil and the animals graze mainly on the former and leave most of the Sesbania plants.

Starting the blog

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Hi there,

A weekly blog to give you a glimpse of our reality at Annapurna farm.

It will sometimes be a bit more elaborate and philosophical, at times short, practical, and to the point.

Right now we are developing more land for green fodder cultivation for the dairy. Our aim is to slowly reduce the concentrate feed which we purchase and replace it with our own-grown nutritional greens.

Since the plot of 1.25 acre had many roots from the previous tree crop it needed a more powerful tractor to rip plow and open it up. We do not have such heavy tools so we got a contractor to do it.

Next, we will put on farm yard manure (fym) which will be plowed in after the next rain.

After this we will install an irrigation system, fence the land with an electrical fence against deer and pigs,  and prepare for the fodder crops.

At this point in time Annapurna’s dairy has several cows which are retired and two of them, Welli and Malli, are really getting old and can not  keep up with the herd anymore.

These cows were born here and served us their entire lives; we feel it will not be good to sell them to a butcher, which is a common practice.

We have been looking at the different sides of this reality and will continue to do so.

The discussion veers between economic repercussions, emotional attachment, practical reality, animal wellbeing, Indian cultural values and more. It’s not an easy deliberation, and we want to share it with you, in this small note, to give people who do support us in various ways, another understanding of the complexity of farming with our dilemmas, restrictions and possibilities.

In short, if we really want to eat food from happy and sustainable farms, which are managed more humane and are less economical oriented, this will have a serious impact on our lives. Can we, do we want to change our lives for this? What are we willing to do to cultivate such places?

Personally I think, looking at todays reality and taking into consideration public health and the earth’s ecological boundaries,  we actually have no choice.

On the ground we have been busy with the usual grain processing to fulfill the weekly incoming grain orders from Foodlink (Auroville’s farm distribution center) and individual communities, then we are bringing in fym to the rice fields for the new season to come, irrigating fodder and fruit crops, and cleaning up the nursery area for a new Gliricidea nursery and fence plants.