The Storyteller – Suhail Bagdadi

Running an orchard is a full time job. But with a full time city job, that’s two full time jobs. With close to two decades in the fast paced media business, my first proper brush with running the orchards I had inherited was overwhelming, despite having seen them being built over decades.

Juggling between the two required distinctly different skillsets, a redefinition of the concept of time and switching between two personality types. One on the edge, over the success or failure of a Friday film release and the other trying to fathom being told in October that the epiphytic orchid growing on the mango tree will flower soon. The soon being the month of May. That’s seven months ahead, during which I would have launched about 25+ campaigns.

Though not exhaustive, here are some elements you can consider while balancing the two

1. Why a farm?

Its raison d’Être? Is it a hobby farm where you spend time destressing, experiencing the rural life or are you going to be economically dependent on it?

2. Find the right fit

Annuals need daily effort, easy access to the land and markets, and for you to spend more time on the land. Perennials take longer to grow and bear fruit, but give you time to understand other aspects of the farm.

3. Experience your land

Spend at least a few days each season observing your land in different seasons. Keep journaling your observation – tree health, root rot, pest attacks, the soil, changing flora, fauna, wildlife etc.

4. Time management

Running a farm can be an overwhelming and time consuming. Figure out the time you can dedicate? Every weekend or a few annually? Plan what you would like to achieve during your time there. Include building a nursery for back-up plants to replace old ones or those felled by pests. Trees take long to grow and any damage could set you back by a few years.

5. People

The people around you will make or break your efforts. Are you and your partner / family aligned? Do you have a reliable man-Friday? Is your team motivated? Do you speak the local language? Interact with other farmers, visit farms and join farming groups. There’s a wealth of knowledge and experience that people are willing to share

6. Paperwork

Update your land records annually. Keep an eye out for any changes or claims on your land. Interact with and maintain friendly relationships with the local community, suppliers, authorities and bank staff.

Thankfully, mangoes being perennial, we can contract the maintenance and harvesting to an external party at a pre-negotiated price. This serves many in the region well as it allows them to adjust their level of involvement with the farming process.

With the monsoons finally over, the November sun is out and it’s time to get back to working at the orchards. While earlier monsoons along the Konkan coast started in June and ended in September, the ongoing climate change has pushed them to begin in July and continue to the end of October. Guess we’ll have to settle for Wyclef Jean’s ‘Gone Till November’ as the unofficial soundtrack for warm sunshine in the region.

This change inevitably delays the entire flowering and fruiting process and pushes the harvesting season further away.

By the end of the monsoons, grass and wild bushes grow a few feet tall. The return of summer starts the transformation of the landscape from lush green to yellow and red and carries the sound of buzzing grass-cutting machines across the region. The buzzing of the grass-cutting machines is accompanied by the buzzing at the local wood mills which go into overdrive to prepare wooden boxes for the upcoming season. Sourcing these in advance is essential to ensure your produce finds its way to the market. However, in the recent past, wooden boxes have begun to be replaced by single-use corrugated paper boxes.

This is also the time when fruit merchants and traders travel across the region to assess the potential crop, strike deals and dole out advances to local orchard owners. Doing this ensures that they have locked in a steady supply of mangoes during the season, besides providing the grower with capital to invest in the processes leading to harvesting.

While this sounds like a win-win situation, the lack of transparency with the sale and pricing process results in the orchard owners being at the mercy of whatever is offered by the fruit merchants. Orchard owners just about break even, with or without a profit, despite the high retail price of mangoes, thus negating the effort employed in harvesting the crop. Much like insurance policies offer a substantial amount at the end of the payment tenure in the case of assured returns. But if you were to work on the calculation, it would amount to no more than 4-5% returns, much lower than most investment options available. For food growers to flourish, they must save themselves from these debt traps.

At Beforest, we try to break free of the market cycles and grow food forests that turn into self-sustaining ecosystems over the years.

Once the decision to transform a conventional mono-cropping mango orchard to a permaculture based food forest was made, the first step was to work on a detailed design plan. We identified the challenges at hand – post monsoon heat and water challenges, soil quality, labour etc and what we had going – a functioning income generating orchard, raised beds under trees, offering a few lakh sq. feet of growing soil.

I had to decide what we could grow at different parts of the orchards – a split between annuals and perennials, plants we which would grow under the current conditions and for which saplings could be sourced locally e.g. mango varieties, moringa, jackfruit, teak, cashews, coconuts and things that we wanted to experiment with (not grown or available locally), like passion fruit, rambutan, dragon fruit, avocado etc.

I had been saving seeds from visits to different farms as well as some desperate methods like using tweezers to pull out dragon fruit seeds from the fruit. My early experiments with sowing seeds directly into the ground met with failure. Most didn’t germinate, the others barely survived or were extremely weak.

Key learning – the soil was not nutritionally rich to support them. The process was time consuming and filled with uncertainty. Instead, I wondered – why not grow seedlings in a nursery or seed trays?

A seedling is a seed that has just sprouted i.e. an infant plant that grows from a seed, rather than from a cutting. They can be planted in soil when they have at least 2 sets of true leaves.

Seedlings give you a sense of the percentage of seeds that sprout and survive to ensure that you have an even start. Besides the basics medium, exposure to light, protection from pests and regular watering can also be controlled.

My early naïve enthusiasm led me planting passion fruit seedlings under different trees instead of creating a space with a trellis. Its only post monsoon did I realise what a nightmare it would be to go watering them across a large landscape. But that’s for another day!

Maharashtras’ Sindhudurg district is famous for its beautiful coastline, seafood, relaxed way of life and the much coveted Alphonso or Hapus Aam, known for its golden yellow color and non-fibrous juicy pulp.

The district has a coastline of 121 km, with about 14 creeks and close to 76900 hectares of agricultural land which is reported to be saline due to sea water ingress along the coast and creeks. Despite high rainfall of 3000+ mm/year, water scarcity is a major concern during the summers. Our village Girye, derived from Gheria meaning ‘surrounded by water’ has the Arabian Sea along one stretch and a creek across the other faces serious water challenges during the non-monsoon season.

Across the orchard, we have a mix of rocky laterite heavy flat land unable to hold water followed by a steep 45 degree slope. The heavy rains result in streams washing away the little soil and leaving the land exposed to nature, unable to nourish itself.

Without institutional support, building large water harvesting structures can be financially challenging. While mangoes are predominantly rainfed, the situation limits the scope to grow anything else. We wanted the financial viability to be driven by ecologically sound solutions.

Our first step was to grass different grass varieties along the barren shallow laterite spaces and use a chop and drop method across the rest of the land. Over the years, the grass has multiplied many folds, developed stronger roots and been able to slow down and control the flow of water. Streams are now puddles, replenishing ground water. The post monsoon chop and drop has over the years started adding organic matter and rebuilding topsoil.

The high canopy cover across other parts of the orchard has ensured that there is a steady supply of leaf cover on ground. Unlike earlier, when this was cleared and burnt, we now let it stay on the ground, thus taking the impact of the heavy rains, storing moisture and slowing the flow of water.

The presence of thick earthworms, visits by migratory birds and my first attempt crop of passion fruit are a welcome indicator of the changes in progress. In a region where most suggestions on trying to do things differently are met with a casual dismissal of ‘nai honar’, it is satisfying to demonstrate that it is possible to make change from within our boundaries.

When life gives you orchards, turn them into permaculture farms!

Our childhood summers were spent along Maharashtra’s Konkan coast. We looked forward to playing hide and seek in large houses, cricket in the fields and fishing by the creek at night. However the daily highlight was our share of alphonso mangoes, the ‘King of Fruits’, lovingly ripened in golden hay.

As the years went by, the number of people visiting the village shrank, houses resembled ‘khandars’, families running orchards were replaced by contractors and evening gossip by which chemical to spray to control ‘thrips’.

My quest to find solutions to these and such undefined questions led me to a Permaculture Design Certificate program, which opened a world of possibilities. Having inherited the orchards built by my folks over the last 40 years, it was my responsibility to take it further as an homage to their hard work and the space they lovingly created.

The diversity in the region began to disappear around the 80s with monocropping for financial security. This lead to an increase in pests and hence the use of chemicals. The generational passage of lands lead to smaller holdings, and with profits shrinking, many moved to cities.

The first step began with making a list of resources on the land, understanding its strengths, weaknesses, soil, water, wind and sun directions, a list of existing vegetation and more. These helped in putting together a base map and defining a design process.

To truly understand land, one must spend a year living on it, observing its behaviour across different seasons and studying its past. Fortunately we had a functioning revenue generating orchard, abundant rainfall, canopy cover, and signs of diversity. The challenges were sea winds that damaged foliage, laterite heavy soil that drained water in drier seasons.

We got working on each of these challenges and a few years later, the changes are visible. Once barren red earth, now shows luscious shades of green, with layers of fresh soil, thick earthworms, a variety of vegetation and the ground holding water instead of streams washing away topsoil. The mango trees have new companions in the form of young cashew plants, moringa, karwanda and turmeric, all suited for the region and serving various functions from soil enrichment, naturally breaking rocks and as wind barriers. Permaculture is an ever evolving process and there is a long way to go, but I’m at it.

It was a miracle that everyone made it into the boats, mid sea; all possessions intact. As the boatmen began rowing back to the port, one could hear the waves beating against the wooden boats, the ship raise its anchor, blow its foghorn in the dead silence of the night and slowly set sail away into the darkness.

Docking and disembarking as the boats beat against the stone steps at the base of the fort, one could only imagine how pirates, soldiers and spies of the past tried to make it to the fort through these waters in the dead of the night.

The electricity shortage, meant most village folk and travelers carried battery operated flash lights to find their way at night. This was a bit like navigating through the Blair Witch project. With the first phase of the adventurous journey done, we waited at the ST bus stop, half sleepy and absolutely silent as the frogs croaked in the background, us too scared to step out of the confines of the covered ticket counter until the first pre-dawn bus finally arrived. We dragged ourselves into the bus and began the next part of our journey, our third mode of transport within 24 hours. The bus meandered through the curvy bends of the road along the hills until it stopped, bang in the middle, with the plateau on one side and a large grassy field on another. After counting all the travelling members and our possessions for the fourth time, we set foot across this vast field illuminated by the full moon, starry sky and enthralled by a shooting star or two.

Walking across the field, the elders took turns carrying bags as we neared our final destination. Having reached the end of the field, we now walked down a spirally winding mud road, holding tight and taking careful steps as the bright moonlit night sky disappeared replaced by high canopy cover. A few minutes later, the squeaky gate opened and we were finally standing in front of our home, surrounded by 100 year old trees, except for a small patch in front of the house that allowed some moonlight to seep in.

The long journey across the sea, a bus ride through the hills and walk through the fields under a full moon starlit sky back home was now complete and new adventures set to begin.

One of my most romanticized memories as a kid was the adventurous summer travel back to our village in the Konkan.

Back in the early 80s, few owned cars or could afford to fly. The only options were to take a back breaking ST bus or one of the 2 ships or steamers from Bombay to Goa – Kokan Shakti or Kokan Sewak. Travelling on these was quite an experience and should have been immortalized in the film Bombay to Goa, instead of the bus journey.

The 24 hour journey included stops at Jaigad, MusaKazi, Vijaydurg and Devgad before reaching Goa. These weren’t like the cruise ships we now see, but more like a sea bus. Also, with the exception of Jaigad and Goa, the other stops did not have ports. So how does one disembark at sea? Well hold on to your mango!

Each ship had 2 cabins, which were almost impossible to book unless you had some influence. Below this was the deck, a large maidaan like open space, no seats and a bench strip along the periphery to enjoy the breeze or throw up after a bout of sea sickness. Below this was the boiler room, a basement space with the engines and where traveling was like being in a sauna.

There were no fixed seating. Once the ship docked, you had to run up and spread a bedsheet. The area it covered became your seating space, like a picnic in the park. Once settled, people brought out their food baskets, played games, fed sea-gulls, while the kids wandered around, making new friends or exploring the ship.

The evenings were spent on the bow, enjoying the sunset and recreating our own versions of pre Titanic “I’m the king of the world” scenarios. Its only when the sun set and it became pitch dark did the enormity of the sea and your inconsequential presence finally sink in.

The ship would finally reach Vijaydurg, a shallow port around 3 am. This meant that it had to anchor mid-sea and wooden boats would come to pick up passengers. Now picture the rough dark seas, a distant light house, a faintly visible fort, the daunting task of getting off a ship on wooden planked rope stairs onto boats being beaten by the sea with all your luggage and family members. It was a miracle that this had an accident free history!

Someone once told me “You could gift someone something expensive and they might not remember it after a few years, but if you gift someone a box of mangoes, they’d remember you for a lifetime”. 

It’s April and it’s that time of the year again when the fruit markets start getting flooded with mangoes of all shapes, sizes and shades of green, orange and yellow. It’s also the time when harvesting at orchards across the Konkan region is in full flow. With the onset of peak summer, the entire region is under the magical spell of the intoxicating aroma of mangoes that hit you the moment you step into an orchard.

My earliest memories of visits to our orchards from December all the way through the month of May were of the transition in weather and the size and color of mangoes. From the flowering phase in December to the early glimpses of tiny seed like fruits in January, gradually increasing in size as the months progressed into summer. I even made up my own ‘Newton’s Law of Mangoes’ which stated that, ‘the size of mangoes is directly proportional to the rise in temperature’, and was pretty proud of it.

Back in the city, I’ve seen men heading back home, with the brightest of smiles despite a hard day’s work, that only possessing a few mangoes can bring. At home, the daily anticipation of checking on which raw mangoes in a box have turned ripe is an experience by itself. The act of taking a peek under the grass to check for a change in color and hoping to find a mango that is completely ripe and then triumphantly lifting it to get a whiff of the intoxicating sweet aroma is no less than joy of watching the best mystery’s unfold.

Though small, it’s one of the greatest joys in life, to hold up a ripe mango … the greatest of all fruits, one which can melt, the harshest of men.  

Visitors at our orchards near Devgad, often marvel at the effort put in by my father in transforming a once hard rocky land into a thriving mango orchard. I always make it a point to inform them that it was my mother who played a bigger role in setting it up while my father was away in the Middle East. 

She had the foresight to invest her savings in small parcels of land, building them one piece at a time, which eventually led to where our orchard stands today. Another accomplishment was to ensure the right documentation for the land title ownership, an element often overlooked back in the day and one which many women are still denied a right to under some pretext or another. The orchard may have been small in size, but it is a testament to her grit and determination in building, transformation, generating employment and providing an economic support system in whatever way she could. 

Like her, there are thousands of women across the country, who play a significant role in supporting the economy but don’t get the due recognition they deserve.  

India’s agricultural sector is amongst the largest in the world with an estimated 180 million hectares of farmland under cultivation. The average Indian farm is just about 1.5 acres in size as compared to 50 hectares in France or 178 hectares in the United States. Small land holdings have often been attributed to the economic unviability of Indian farming, leading to men migrating to cities in search of a livelihood, leaving women folk behind to manage the small farms. Estimates claim women make up almost 33% of cultivators and 47% of the agricultural labourers. Despite these large numbers, their contribution goes unrecognized not only in terms of due credit, but also land rights, access to credit, representation in local farmers organizations, but also in terms of pay, with daily wage labourers earning almost 50% less than their male counterparts.          

So what can you do at an individual level to make a difference at your farms and within your  families? Start with the basics. Promote women’s literacy, educate them about their rights, provide growth and leadership opportunities and an equal say in decision making. Support access to credit, their share in land rights and pay parity.    

What I speak about is from personal experience … and I’ve seen it work.

‘The Problem is the Solution’ is one of Bill Mollison’s original Principles of Permaculture.

One of the biggest challenges confronting many of us running orchards along the Konkan coast has been large swaths of laterite and very little soil. A quick drive across the region will show you acres and acres of mango orchards with trees literally built on circular raised bed like structures with not much else growing around.

The key to running a cost effective farm is reducing the input cost and finding ways to have multiple harvests across seasons. Cashew plants take a good 4-5 years before growing big enough to bear fruit, while alphonso mangoes can take upwards of 7 years. The wait is long and has often driven many to give up mid-way.

The question of what else could I possibly grow cost effectively in these conditions always hit the road block of good quality soil and the expense in sourcing it.

During my Permaculture Design Certification, I convinced my group to work on my orchard as our presentation project. Spread over three days we evaluated various options, applied permaculture principles while simultaneously looking for out of the box solutions. A listing of existing resources highlighted that we had 700+ mango trees, each with a raised soil bed of about 2-3 feet in height and an average 20 feet diameter. A quick back of the hand calculation showed us that there was at least a few thousand square feet of land with soil available. The solution to our biggest hurdle was right under these mango trees in plain sight.

After much deliberation, we choose to sow some turmeric under the trees. It ticked off quite a few parameters on my list.

• Easy to source
• Low maintenance and minimal intervention
• Feeds off rain water
• Yields in a relatively short span of time (under a year)
• Has a fair commercial value  

Our first experiment with introducing diversity will soon bear fruit (in this case some spice). Pratibha is a relatively new variety of turmeric developed by the Indian Institute of Spice Research (IISR) has a curcumin value of 6 percent. The harvest, due towards the end of February will help us understand the soil and output quality better and give us the confidence to move ahead with exploring new possibilities. And all it took was to change our perspective about a problem.