Paddy Field Notes | November 2022

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Earlier this month we closed in transplanting paddy, a total of 20 acres with primary 3 varieties – Annapurna (farmer’s select), Poovan Samba (red) and CO43 (white; for parboiling) along with “Bhavani’ for seasonality test and a couple improved red varieties, long grain basmati for seed production.

After field preparation and transplanting; weeding the paddy is an extensive task and expense. We are testing various methods to reduce the weeding efforts; starting with a direct seed drill using a paddy drum seeder (hand-operated) to give a breather from continuous transplanting to start weeding early, dryland weeding techniques (couldn’t test extensively this season) and cutting overgrown weeds (grasses) through selected growing paddy fields.
In the best-case scenario, we receive a good amount of rainfall at the beginning or before the paddy season that fills 3 of our ponds enough to keep the fields wet that controls weed growth to some extent. Wet paddy fields are also easier to pull weeds out whereas dry hard fields slow down the process.
In season 2022-23 we observe very light rain (SW) at the beginning of the paddy, usually NE wind turn by the end of October but not this season. As ponds were running dry, we pause and yet continue through the season to finish the transplant by pulling in borewells and diesel pumps to irrigate the crop extensively. While struggling with the weather, we observed an uncontrollable amount of weeds coming through some paddy fields (extended dry conditions). CO43, one of our early short-erect straw variety and test direct sown Annapurna was the most affected; as we deal with these early planted fields, there is the next round of weeds building up in later planted paddy.

But the second week of November has brought us enough rainfall to fill one of the pond to its capacity. For now we can switch off borewells and fossil fuel for the paddy season.

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.

Paddy Field Notes | October 2022

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We started the paddy season this year on 28th August sowing the first seedbed. The season began with an all-season improved variety CO43 along with Bhavani to test its early seasonality. We started the field preparation in the dry month of September where unlike the last couple of years, there was no trace of summer showers.
As of today, we have finished transplanting varieties: CO43, Farmer’s select Annapurna, Test|Bhavani and Test|Uma (red) in 14.7 of 20 acres of paddy and the remaining fields are still being prepared to plant further with red rice variety – Poovan Samba.

We skipped sowing Poovan Samba (red rice) as a test direct sowing system last week as 2 large ponds are reduced to the minimum and we are left with 2 bore wells, a single rain harvesting reservoir at its half capacity. Which shifts our focus now on maintaining – mainly weeding what is transplanted yet slowly moving to prepare remaining fields as we observe light monsoon (still South-west) in the air.

Upper pond

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As mentioned before in these blogs, summertime is the best time for the farm to get projects done to expand and improve Annapurna’s capacity.

In the last several weeks we have picked up the unfinished work of a project which was started in 2018 when we got liberal funding to expand our rainwater harvest capacity. In that year we doubled the water capacity of the irrigation ponds to approximately 50,000m3 and with this we could expand the rice growing area to around 20 acres and started to grow bananas on a more serious scale. We also could start to grow more fodder for the dairy. All this while tapping very little into the groundwater.

Digging such a big hole gave us a lot of soil to dispose of. We realized that the soil was a wonderful material to build a hill which could contain an elevated pond. What we did not realize was that this was not just a little extra work but quite a big job to get done. It also needed a serious budget to be able to do all this work but again there was a donor who wanted to help manifest this project and we are very thankful for this.

First, it needed lots of work to prepare the site, then find a reliable pond-liner dealer, purchase and install the material and finally protect the pond from the wildlife which will be attracted to the water body. About protection, you see the material will get punctured by the sharp hooves of deer and pigs, and the animals will probably drown since the wet liner is very slippery and animals might not be able to scale the sloping sides and come out of the basin.

Since it took us several years after creating the hill and getting to the job of lining the elevated pond, the site had become a virtual jungle. It was a lot of work to clear all the vegetation by hand since it was not possible to get a JCB into the area. The sides were too steep to work and the machine would disturb the soil too much.

The good thing was that having gone through several monsoons, the hill soil had stabilized well and we had solid ground to work on. After clearing the site of the vegetation and removing all sharp objects like small limestone nuggets, roots/thorns and what not, we called in the company who had supplied the liner material. Two days before they came, we had a nice rain, but which gave us some extra work because the sides of the pond had been damaged.

I Pictures: Left – digging a trench around the pond. Right – after rain, the sides eroded again.

Then when they did come on a Saturday morning (from Bangalore) both the technician and helper had probably visited neighboring Sedarapet, which is part of Pondicherry, where the laws for alcohol use are more liberal. The helper could hardly stand on his legs and the technician was in a very apathetic mood.

We still managed to put down the geo textile to protect the liner material but when the real work started it did just didn’t feel right and we stopped the work for the moment. We were happy when the company was very responsive and apologized profusely and sent us another technician on the following Monday. The work to put down the liner was very challenging; the material is very heavy, and it was very hot down in the pond with temperatures between 45-50 degrees and the material itself too hot to touch with bare hands. It was a full day work with around 15 people holding and stretching the material.

Right now we are doing the finishing work of tucking the sides of the liner into the trench which was dug around the pond. We could only do this after filling the pond with water (approx. 1200m3) to let the liner settle according to the pond shape. Then we must finish the electric fence to protect it from wild animals, but also for people who might slip in and not easily get out of the water.

In the season to come we have to see how make best use of this elevated water body. It will surely be very helpful to create a buffer stock of water during the rice growing season because 3-phase electricity is very erratic and comes often outside working hours. We have to see how much pressure we get at the outlet which is quite far out in the fields. Depending on that we can use it in different ways on different crops.

The water body up there gives a wonderful feel and we are quite excited to explore the various possibilities, especially after such a long process.

In the bigger picture this storage basin makes the farm function more efficiently, and we are more resilient and less vulnerable to the erratic power supply of the grid. Having this upper pond, we can start dreaming of filling it using solar pumps. This will make the whole water scenario of Annapurna Farm very sustainable and independent of the grid.

Various projects.

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Digging of the pond, rice cultivation experiment and new biogas tank.

Besides the normal farm operations, we have been engaged with various projects in the past week.

Tarun is busy putting a periphery bund around a piece of forest land Annapurna acquired through a land exchange many years back. The land is a bit over one acre and is located in the very far North corner of the farm. We are digging a small water catchment pilot and with the soil which comes from the hole we are building a bund around the land.
We can do this work because of a generous well-wisher who sees the importance of protecting and greening the land.

Then we stumbled upon an interesting way of rice cultivation on the Internet which is practiced in northern Thailand. Madhuri is doing experiments in pots to test the viability of the system so we have a better idea how to implement it when the paddy season starts. We hope this method will help us make steps forward in using less labor in the paddy cultivation. Labor is by far the primary cost in rice cultivation and prices keep going up fast while labor availability is dwindling.

Another ongoing project which moved forward was the installation of an additional biogas tank. A few months back we got a second-hand biogas digester from Ravena (a greenbelt community in Auroville). Andre and his team have been busy fixing and repainting it. Yesterday we put it in the ground and in the next weeks we hope to get it all fixed and connected to the dairy and fruit processing facility. They’re all small steps but very important and it’s satisfying to see things coming to fruition after often very long preparations.