Soiltoscale

30 years ago, from my native place….

On a paddy harvesting day, farm labors were on lunch break after the tedious job of bringing the harvest to the backyard. Plan was to finish lunch and then continue rest of the harvesting process. However, untimely rain, rushed them towards backyard to save harvested grains. To accelerate the process, entire family, including my 75 years old grandmother joined the workforce. It was hard to lose 4 months effort, thus, it became a “food security” issue for entire family and farm labors (because they would get harvested grain as “salary”).

Couple of years ago, from my farmland….

We grew millet crop as natural as possible (no inputs added) in our farm, which resulted in 1/5th of typical yield one would get with recommended inputs applied. To test the hypothesis of Direct to Consumer (D2C), did a direct marketing of the harvest. Entire operation resulted in loosing 52% of investment (forget about earning profit!). In addition, a consumer even commented that, grains were not of same color as how they get in supermarkets and requested for payback!

Last year from a Swiss mountain farm….

I volunteered a week in Switzerland mountain farm – cleaning the cowshed, fencing, enriching soil with cow dung etc. Though farmers here have better accessibility to technology, “hard work” remains bottom-line of the farming operation even here!

Today….

I am writing this note, sitting inside a luxurious apartment, having access to everything that I need and thinking through, what should I communicate on the topic of hashtag#foodsecurity, hashtag#foodproduction, hashtag#sustainability, hashtag#profitability, hashtag#consumerexpectations and #farmerslife.

I do not want to write a big essay here, but, bottom-line is, none of us understand real problem behind food production and farming systems

Recently, through a LinkedIn poll, I requested your intention to go back to farming as a full-time profession (thank you for your responses). Less than 44% of you said “Yes” to it. Further, I checked in many forums (college student groups, our lunch breakouts etc.), providing little more context of harsh realities of farming – many said “No” to such life.

Farming is a Business too! Farmers are out in the harsh environment to produce more, earn a decent profit and take care of their family!

Now, let’s flip the coin – Consumers utilize social media and other forums to create “awareness” about farming – how worst it has become, how “much” they use technologies etc. We talk about why farmers are not adopting “natural farming” “sustainable farming”, “no input farming” etc. However, reality is, most of us don’t want to go back to farming as a profession!

Sustainability has many dimensions and vantagepoints….

Let us be judicious when we use term Sustainability in Food production. We need to balance what “Sustainability” means to Farmers and to Us. Unnecessary pressure on farming community is resulting in shrinking of farming skills across the world (aging farming population is a harsh reality today and farmer themselves don’t want their kids to become a farmer!)

Experience farming for a day, doing exactly what farmer does, to understand ground reality.

Above notes are bit harsh on us. However, under the backdrop of hashtag#sustainability agenda and hashtag#COP27, I thought of being pragmatic in my opinion on who need to change – Farmers OR Consumers?

Open for debate, jump in. Let’s make more minds talk about this key topic and find a middle ground that works for all.