He's very proud that he was judged the 'Best Farmer' by the Department of Agriculture for 2011-12. The certificate says that he was given the award, "in recognition of his commitment and exemplary effort in increasing production and productivity in the field of agriculture". Waving the certificate proudly, he says, This house and our land is part of the agrarian economy.

September 30 -October 6, 2013

Pushpa Iyengar

A visit to the nearly 290-year-old sprawling house of Rui Araujo and his brothers in Chicalim is a lesson in shedding stereotypes.  Here is a simple man, with none of the snobbish airs of those who peddle today’s health food fad, who has been growing organic rice for the last four years and is still taking baby steps, but is not shouting from the rooftops about it.  One can even say he is taking faltering steps because he’s yet to come up with a foolproof idea to keep pests at bay, but he has made his lifestyle choice for good.


Rui, an administrator in a school (Regina Mundi high school, Vasco), gave up his job three years ago to turn fulltime farmer.  “I showed a lot of interest in agriculture right from my childhood when we (he and his brothers, Cosme and Bernadino) had the opportunity to help our father and uncle at our farm.  I used to assist them in planting saplings, grafting of mangoes/cajus, manuring, paddy cultivation, harvesting, etc,” he says. “They both encouraged me,” he reminisces about his two role models, who have both passed on.

Au naturel

Till the 1980's, the cultivation was done organically, but after that chemical fertilizers were introduced as a manure for fruit-bearing trees and also for the cultivation of paddy. "I noticed a lot of damage and harm caused due to the fertilizers." He discontinued the use of fertilizers and switched to organic farming although he knows it takes five to six years before the soil makes a complete transformation. "I got the inspiration to grow organic rice from a friend, Caesar Gomes, of Guirdolim," he says.

The latter passed on a tip, based on Japanese technology where you mulch weed plants and spread them around in the field as a manure to get the soil ready for planting.It really stinks up the fields, he laughs but knows this is the right way to go. After that he spreads 100 per cent organic manure, a mix of dung, cattle urine and leaves, readily available because he has a dairy.

The dairy was started by his father and now has grown to include three cows and 11 buffaloes that between them give between 40-50 litres of milk a day that is savoured by Chicalim residents in the vicinity of his house. While Rui is the farmer, older brother Cosme is the "milkman", and younger brother, Bernandino, who lives in a bungalow opposite, assists them while working at his job in the electricity department.

He's very proud that he was judged the 'Best Farmer' by the Department of Agriculture for 2011-12. The certificate says that he was given the award, "in recognition of his commitment and exemplary effort in increasing production and productivity in the field of agriculture". Waving the certificate proudly, he says, This house and our land is part of the agrarian economy. Every year, he harvests between 15-18 quintals of rice, although now it is slightly less since he has gone organic.

 

Birds of the destructive feather flock together

But it has not been all gain, no pain. In fact much of the trouble has come from a bird that everyone wows at because of its beautiful plume of feathers. Even Rui says, "It was such a pleasure to see. But the pleasure brought lots of pain three years ago. Yes, I am talking about the "proud" peacock which came, bringing in reinforcements of 30-40, to nibble through all the rice which was about to be harvested. The result was that Rui abandoned growing rice in the field that sprawls over 4,000 to 4,500 sq metres at the back of the house, on which he used to cultivate every alternate year, and concentrates on the 7,400 sq metres he has in front.

Last year, however, he was tempted to grow maize. And he got a lovely field of ripe and ready maize. Here I was wondering how to get the market for it, he says talking about the plan in his head. But overnight a group of parakeets descended and totally destroyed the field. Till today I have not paid my labourers. In fact, they have refused to take money from me because the crop was a total loss and I did not earn anything.

A complete farmer

So, while he cannot count on the feathered variety as friends, he can rely on his workers (about 20 of them) who help take care of all the properties, 80 per cent of which hosts agricultural activities. There's the cultivation of paddy and fodder like sorghum and Punjab -6, work at the coconut plantation, maintenance and care of the caju plantation, harvesting fish from two fresh water ponds, the maintenance of the nearly century-old mango trees and the dairy.

He tried his hand at poultry farming between 1995- 2002 but gave it up. Initially the business was quite profitable, but later I faced a lot of competition and also the rates of broilers fell. I thought it was not worth the trouble. But he's a true blue farmer, in the sense that all the equipment he had bought to run the poultry farm is still there, if he feels like trying again. Rui has also got himself trained in the grafting of mango and caju and also did a short course in the cultivation of mushrooms from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Ela, Old Goa.

Because of the organic food fad there are many me-too labels but the food safety department have doubts about the claims of many sellers. In Rui's case, worry not, because he's armed with a FDA stamp. Besides, having taken the chemical fertilizers route and seen what it can do to the environment, he's not going there again.