Kulbeer Singh is a farmer from district Kurukshetra in Haryana. He started by saying that he is publishing this video on FTB which will take 10 to 15 minutes of your time and which he is recording from his farm.
Singh is a marginal farmer, not a big landowner and has spent last 5-6 years thinking and working out how to make his farming profitable. He has been associated with farming over 25 years and farming is his family business.
He started his career in farming with bee keeping 23 years ago. He said beekeeping is not something that all farmers can do. Through experience he has learnt that knowledge of horticulture is important for this business. He said crops like wheat, rice and corn are harvested once a year and all of the farmers bring these to the market at the same time, hence lowering the prices. He said good living can be made out of horticulture crops, even if the farmer owns 2 acres of land.
He grows Indian jujube, bottle gourd, bitter gourd, cauliflower, brinjal, coriander, cucumber on his farm which he show us in the video. Coriander can be sold in the market at Rs 200 per KG, but you need to plan the seasons when you grow your crops and months when you are going to sell these, so as to get good price for your hard work. He has been following crop patterns over two acres of his farmland. Currently he has planted bitter gourd, bottle gourd and brinjal and once he has harvested these he plans to grow cucumber, cauliflower and coriander next. He suggests the farmers of regular crops like rice, wheat and maize should grow horticulture cash crops to maintain the fertility of their farm soil.
He said that the farming communities and the agri economics needs to change with time to match the requirements of the farmers. He talks of some calculations that he has done. He says a village of 2,000 residents with farmers and working professionals sends to the urban areas 10-15 Crore rupees worth of goods and services. He said if a farmer from the village sells his goods at Rs 60 per KG to a retailer, and then a resident of the same village goes and buys the same product from that retailer at Rs 100 per KG, the farmer has suffered a loss of RS. 40. He said not only people but our cash too is flowing from rural to urban areas.
He said we need to build rural economies which have education, dairies and horticulture crops. We will not be able to manufacture items like clothes, but we can make the rural economy up to 80% self sufficient. The money that goes from farmers to middlemen should go to farmers. We need to stop the flow of these crores of rupees.
He continued that rather than focusing on single harvest crops, farmers should focus on multiple harvest crops. Rather than relying on major crops you should do mixed farming. He said Kurukshetra has got rivers with water for irrigation and the soil here is quite fertile, compared to many areas in India. He said its best to grow food items for your kitchen in your farm. He said this will be particularly beneficial for low income families. He said some of you may like my ideas while others among you may not, but I am only suggesting.
He said most of the families in village are buying milk from retail stores and have stopped owning cows and buffaloes. Thus there is no organic manure and inorganic fertilizers are to be used. To make our life progressive we need to carefully think about all these processes. He said he plans to publish another video about milk and milk based products like paneer, ghee and others. He again mentions his bee-keeping farm which is next to his 2 acre horticulture farm. The honey bees get different type of pollen for their honey and are never short of pollen all year round.
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