Food Forest in Asu!!

Growing Food Forests is my passion!!

I grew up on a farm and have chosen farming as my career.

I was born in an agricultural family, in Asu. A small village that is only 5 hours drive away from Mumbai, towards the interiors of Maharashtra. I was homeschooled until grade 1 and since we lived on the farm, I was amongst the fortunate few to get exposed to the art of growing food, the most important skill we all need to survive. I thoroughly enjoyed my childhood on the farms back then. In fact, I enjoyed it so much, that even after being educated in Pune and Singapore, working in Mumbai, Singapore and the US. I still yearned to back to the farm.

I returned back to the farms in March 2020, a few weeks before the Covid pandemic was declared. On returning back I realised that agriculture wasn’t yielding produce like how it did a few decades ago. When we further diagnosed the problem we realised that the soil quality had deteriorated tremendously due to the modern Green Revolution Practices. Post green revolution the farmers focused more on quantitive produce than qualitative produce, thus leading to maximising the resources at the cost of damaging the soil. We wanted to build a model to revive the soil and at the same time create a commercially viable proof of concept for our fellow farmers to follow sustainably. Growing a fruit forest with Permaculture practices was the most suitable solution for the challenge.

This journey to building the Food Forest wasn’t going to be easy because we had no one to refer to, very little relevant information online. In September 2020, I happened to meet the Gupta family who also desired to start a Food Forest, from which they wanted to provide healthy, clean and traceable food for their friends and family. We embarked on this journey together with a common goal in October, 2020.

To begin with, we prepared the fields by tilling the weed and levelling the plots as per design for efficient irrigation and drainage. We designed the plots to and marked the fields so that in the future each tree in the forest has enough space to grow and the neighbouring trees/plants also compliment each others growth, by mitigating the spread of pests and viruses. We focussed on procuring only traditional seeds and saplings.

Why should we all participate in, promote and purchase products from Permaculture?

Permaculture is a term coined by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in 1978. It was created in opposition to the popular Green Revolution and it encouraged the community to adopt traditional practices of cultivation and traditional varieties of seed.

Permaculture means Permanent Agriculture. It promotes self-sustainable farming which produces clean food. Today most of the food we consume is hybrid and adulterated therefore for the sake of our family’s health and happiness it’s important we promote and purchase products from permaculture.w

We visited one of the few traditional seed banks where we found authentic traditional variety of seeds. We manually dug the pits and planted the saplings after application of Neem powder (anti-fungal natural repellent), Beejamrut (natural root enhancer) and Jeevamrut (Organic fertigation). By successfully deploying such natural methods manually we’ve successfully obtained a nutritious and delicious yield of seasonal pulses, oilseeds and grains (Chickpea, Sunflower and Amaranth) and also happened to learn from the failure of trying to grow some nuts and pulses (groundnut and Black gram). Our biggest achievement in the past one year has been the improving quality of soil and the flourishing growth of the forest saplings along with an increase in a number of birds, butterflies and friends insects that were only seen in the vicinity more than a few decades ago. Some of our Fruits trees in the forest have also started fruiting and the satisfaction we get on seeing the fruit of labour is immense. We strongly recommend that everyone should experience growing a food forest in and around their homes or else grow a fruit forest in an open space and then someday build a home in that forest. After this pandemic we all have learnt it the hard way that there is very little we need in our lives, no amount of bank balance or assets are as important as clean and healthy food on the plate every day for our family.

Often we all desire to give back to nature but due to our busy schedules and commitments in day to day lives this desire always gets pushed on the back burner. To those who possess this desire should seek inspiration from our friend Mr Mohit Gupta who has actioned upon his desire to give back to the nature and also has plans to feed his friends and family with healthy, clean and natural organic food that he can trace back to the roots, he has taken ownership of a 3-acre project. We invite you all to participate in this journey of ours to give back to nature as much as you can and at the same time trade it for healthy produce for your loved ones.

Written by Dhirendraraje Nimbalkar
Week 41 October 2021