Cheap chini thrills farmers

So you thought sugarcane was an expensive crop? So, probably, did most of the world. Except one man in the nondescript village of Bedkihal i...

So you thought sugarcane was an expensive crop? So, probably, did most of the world. Except one man in the nondescript village of Bedkihal in Karnataka’s Belgaum district who, for the past 12 years, has been reaping the sweet fruits of his ‘zero-budget’ method.

Meet Suresh Desai. He studied only upto matriculation, but that didn’t come in the way of his recognition of the pathbreaking farming philosophy of his guru Shreepad Dabholkar of Kolhapur: more sunlight, less water. Right from 1991, when he tried in out in practice, the results were fantastic: His 12-acre farm yielded 40 tonnes to an acre, and his actual investment was zilch.

And now, after 12 years, the Desai Method has been recognised by the National Agriculture Research Centre, Nagpur, which is trying to popularise his style of sugarcane farming.

How does he do it? Desai — an activist of Vandana Shiva’s organic farming movement and a recipient of the Maharashtra government’s organic farming award this year — says he follows a six-step methodology. To start with, the buds are scooped out from the canes and grown in the nursery. (Desai has also designed a machine to facilitate the process, see photo alongside.) The remaining cane is ready for sale, which saves on the entire cost of the seed.

Also, the Desai Method — around 300 farmers in Belgaum have followed in his footsteps — recommends seasonal intercropping in between four-feet-apart rows of sugarcane. The sugarcane itself is always planted in a north-south direction so as to absorb the maximum sunlight. And the entire cost of sugar cultivation is recovered through seasonal crops like soyabean, gram and coriander (see box). The inter-crop biomass negates the need for chemical fertilisers.

The irrigation channels are progressively shifted to the centre of the space between the sugarcane rows, thereby reducing water usage by 50 per cent. This practice also encourages roots to go down deeper in the soil, thereby strengthening the crop.

When the crop starts sprouting, the central shoot is removed to allow 12-15 offshoots to emerge at one point. This step pushes up the weight of the cane from 500-700 gm to 1.5-2.5 kg. The crop yield ranges between 40-100 tonnes, which is much higher than that produced through conventional methods. Sugar recovery is 12-14 per cent.

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While only four of the eight farmers from Burhanpur, Madhya Pradesh, who came to study his Bedkihal farm in 2000, tried it out, their harvest was so impressive that some 2,000 farmers have switched to the innovative methodology last year, says Desai. Some farmers in Kolhapur and Jalgaon in western Maharashtra and Jamner in Vidarbha have also taken it up.

Desai has his critics, among them the Vasantdada Sugar Institute at Manjri, Pune. However, NARC secretary Manohar Parchure, himself a state award-winning farmer, says, ‘‘The real roadblocks are the vested interests — the seed traders, the fertiliser industry, the sugar coops, all those who control the pre- and post-cultivation operations. We are determined to popularise the Desai Method against all odds.’’