Bengulureans hone skills in water harvesting and biodiversity to run a farm successfully

BENGALURU: Lavanya K, a special educator from Bengaluru, has always wanted to live off the land, through sustainable practices. But she never had the first-hand experience of water harvesting and management, and biodiversity , among other things, needed to run a farm successfully.

For the past eight months, the 40-year-old has been religiously taking time off from her work on weekends and weekdays, to volunteer at a farm in Chikkaballapura -about 60 km from Bengaluru -to learn the ropes of running a farm. She will soon be applying the same to her own land near Ramanagara, off the Bengaluru-Mysuru road.

Many in the city, passionate about living responsibly , are turning to training themselves at farms in and around the city , where they picks up skills that can be applied to setting up a balcony garden, to permaculture (the system of agriculture and social design principles based on natural ecosystems) for a mediumor large-sized land.

swaYYam, a volunteer-based non-profit farm near the famous wildlife sancturary of Bandipur, teaches skills to raise field crops, setting up a garden or nursery , composting, natural building processes, permaculture, among other things. The minimum period of volunteering is 15 days with the maximum going up to a year, depending on a person's need to learn. Malvikaa Solanki, founder, swaYYam says, "We get at least five enquiries a month for volunteership. People are required to write in about themselves and why they want to volunteer. This helps us gauge the seriousness of a candidate and we select based on their passion."


Most take six to 12 months to understand a complete cycle of sowing (Image: Thinkstock)

Shishira Murthy , 23, a freelance writer in the city volunteers at a farm once a year, to learn skills on farming. During her volunteering at a farm, she learnt to build sustainable structures with bamboo and coconut leaves besides the health drink Kombucha, a fermented, effervescent sweetened black or green tea drink known for its health benefits. "But my greatest learning was the technique of inter cropping that lets me grow more plants in a small balcony garden and mulching, that saves the water from evaporating from the soil," Murthy says.

Most in the business, however, suggest that volunteers should ideally spend six to 12 months, to understand a complete cycle of sowing, growing and harvesting.

Healthy Buddha, a city-based organic farms company , has been taking in serious volunteers who want to focus on learning organic farming. Says Anurag Dalmiya, cofounder, " A lot of IT professionals have invested in farms around the Karnataka and Tamil Nadu border, and are availing of such training, to go back and apply it to their land." At their farms, volunteers are handpicked based on interest levels and also at what stage of farming they need training on.