The F word

The F word has an interesting effect on different people. Most people find it offensive and will be quick to tell you, quite dutifully, that such things are not for 'classy' people. While for others, you've earned their respect as one cool person who isn't ashamed of expressing herself in an atmosphere of such disapproval. As for some others, it induces them to share feel good maudlin memes of starvation and suicide. 

I'm talking about Farming of course (*insert cheshire cat grin*)

Farming. For most of the educated and elite (yes that includes you too 'middle class'), it's something the poor do which doesn't figure in one's daily lives at all. It has absolutely nothing to do with the breakfast buffet at the Leela Palace, has zilch to do with Zomato and for some food bloggers, absolutely tasteless! ("This salad was grown in mud?!!"). 

Don't get me wrong, farming does figure in our education and job market. Only here it's called agriculture. Agriculture is the acceptable branch of farming an educated urban elite can indulge in. To pursue agricultural research falls safely within the limits of societal approval. I myself did my Master's thesis on finding a suitable pesticide to kill unsuspecting moths brunching on cabbage, by never having to leave the computer lab or talk to a single farmer. I did it all computationally and was very smug about it. 

Till of course I realised that farming practices existed which didn't need a hundred page thesis *cough waste of time cough*. Farming practices existed which effectively dealt with managing pests without the need for pesticides. And the realization which really hit was that the silver bullet I thought I'd found for just cabbage eating moths was in reality a mass poison. There I was, furiously contributing to further ground water contamination and poisoning of all manners of life, and no one said a thing. I even participated in a poster presentation of my work and nobody said a thing. If anything, I was made to feel like a worthy student in academia.

There's a hundred reasons why I am now a farmer. One of them is because I once told my partner Mani about wanting to farm sustainably some day and he took it seriously. So seriously that I was (and still am) furious with him for pushing me to look my 'dream' in the face and in person. All the things I'd talked to him about, the books I'd read, who Nammalvar was and what he'd spoken about and fought for, the myth of the Green Revolution to feed the nation and so much more, were brought right back to me in stark reality. I'm not sure how people usually find themselves when their dreams come true, but for me it felt like I was thrown in the deep end. It's like one minute you're saying you love the ocean and the next you're taken bodily to the middle of it and thrown overboard without a life jacket. While you're gasping for breath you're then asked why you're not appreciative of the marine life around you which you'd read so much about. Get my drift? (and the pun?)

I've had a lot of people ask me why I am farming ("You're educated! Why would YOU choose farming?"), if I know what I'm doing ("Do you know how important water is?", "You really think you can make a profit in farming without fertilisers?") and in general asked if I've lost my head. There's also others who've been genuinely interested in the work Mani and I do and the resources we follow, which is why I've decided a blog is a good place to put everything in. 

Here's to The "F" word! I hope it helps you as much as it helps me find answers to the existential questions posed by critics in choosing farming as a career and way of life.


First picture we took of the land - the brown stretch


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