The rain and slush don’t dampen furniture-manufacturer-turned-farmer Suneet Salvi’s enthusiasm; he is entranced by the greenery around. He stops suddenly, almost squeaking with delight, to point out a bunch of wild mushrooms. A few yards later, he greets a chameleon on a tree branch; the reptile bobs its head, but then retreats into the foliage.
This bucolic spectacle is in his farm, at Murbad village, Dahanu district, near Maharashtra’s border with Gujarat. It was barren, he says, abandoned by the local people. It had just a few insects around, let alone birds or animals. In just over two years, following what he calls ‘ pranik ’ farming — only indigenous trees and crops, no synthetic fertilisers or pesticides — he has been building a permaculture by rejuvenating soil and groundwater, and intends to create a multi-layered food forest with small blocks of spice and fruit trees.
New pastures
It’s not just the land Mr. Salvi has transformed; he began by completely changing his own life. He had spent 18 years in the corporate world, and another 10 running his own furniture manufacturing business, and led a comfortable suburban life in Mumbai. But he had always had a hankering for farming. He’d even told his wife, before they married, that he would turn to farming eventually.
In May 2016, just after he turned 50, he took his family out to dinner and told them he was going to quit business and become a farmer. He knew his wife would not be surprised, but he was worried about what his two teenagers would think. “I wanted them to understand life was going to be tough financially,” he says. They surprised him. “They said, ‘You always ask us to follow our dreams; it’s only natural you follow yours.’” His wife set just one condition: wherever he decided to farm, it should be close enough to Mumbai so he could come back quickly in case of family emergencies. He chose Dahanu, a short drive away from the city, and after selling his business, began to look for land.
Through his daughter, an architecture student, he met Pratik Dhanmer, an architect in Murbad; Mr. Dhanmer and his family showed him around and helped him build bonds with the locals, who are mostly of tribal descent.
Preparing the ground
His initial idea was to do community farming with the tribals, but the project was a non-starter as tribal land is hugely fragmented. Since some of the youth were excited about farming, he decided to borrow unused-barren land and run an experimental natural farm.
At first glance, the area was all a farmer could want: it abutted an approach road, groundwater levels were high, and the land was flat. Strangely, though, there was no cultivation. He soon realised why: the soil was washed out. The little soil the land had was lifeless, so his first task was to bring it back to life.
Nature takes 500 years to create an inch of topsoil; Mr. Salvi decided to speed this up. With a team of locals, he dug pits, filled them with biomass — branches, weeds, leaves and coconut husks he brought in from Mumbai — and covered them with mud, to let earthworms and microorganisms turn the decomposing matter into humus, the organic component of soil. They piled more biomass on top, to prevent sunlight from evaporating moisture in the soil; eventually this should reduce irrigation requirements by 50% to 60%. “This year, we’re taking it a step further, planting greenery just for mulching. The rains will hopefully add a lot of biomass to the soil. We’re heading towards making it self-sustaining.”
(Clockwise from the bottom) turmeric and papaya plantations,
He’s clear it must all be organic: “Nearly 35% of our entire biodiversity is in the soil: one spoon of healthy soil contains over a billion microorganisms. Chemical farming kills them. Once that is destroyed, the entire food chain goes.”
Labour’s fruits
He began planting with vegetables and ginger. “Generally, the roots go down, but because the soil was so hard they went sideways, some up to 10–15 feet.”
He has since planted five varieties of banana, eight of brinjal, three of papaya, and over a thousand other trees, including moringa, cherry, mulberry, guava, gooseberry, mango, lemon, sweet-lime, chikoo, trees from the custard-apple family, Indian dates, and even some coffee and avocado plants, and herbs. “Since we are mimicking nature and we do multi-cropping and create as much biodiversity as we can.”
His papaya, ginger and turmeric have found demand at organic markets in Bandra and Juhu in Mumbai.
Customers pay ₹600 a kilo for his turmeric, when cheaper options are available. “They understand its purity. It even smells sharper than the regular variety.” Recently, someone came all the way to the farm and bought 44 kg of papaya.
There have also been setbacks. Like when the moringas began to sicken, he had no idea why until someone told him they were worm-infested. He tried all sorts of organic remedies, from sugar syrup to kerosene, before finding the worms could not stand petrol. Then, he has run out of papaya. The tree grows and fruits fast, but also usually dies in a few years, and new ones must be planted frequently; he had not accounted for this and hadn’t planted in time.
The saddest problem is the once-enthusiastic locals have lost interest, so labour is hard to find. “I've been told they will return in three to four years, when they see progress. Right now, they don't believe it can be done.” He’s been putting in all the money, and is yet to break even, but he is optimistic income will come from the spice trees, bananas, and bamboo he plans to plant. In five years, he says with a laugh and a hop, “it will be paradise!”
Water conservationist and biologist Ajit Gokhale, who Mr. Salvi had turned to for guidance, is amazed by the transformation in the land: “Earlier, he couldn’t dig even six inches; he can now go three feet deep.”
Mr. Salvis’s work ethic is the reason, he says. “He goes to his farm every week, supervises the work, takes the effort to understand what goes wrong. And he has a network back home that helps him sell his produce.” Dr. Gokhale says Mr. Salvi’s experiences are a lesson for all who want to farm. “It is not a laid-back profession. Timing is critical: you lose that, you lose the crop and the season.” One also needs financial stability to survive inevitable rough times. “People think if you have seed, soil and water, it will work. It does, but it won’t give you the appropriate yield.”
Growing within
The last two years have taught Mr. Salvi much. His life now runs to nature’s rhythms, a world away from the pressure-cooker work environments he has known. “If I am doing well,” he says, “it doesn’t mean somebody else should do badly, which is unlike the corporate world, where to succeed someone else must fail. Here, the more you help others, the more you succeed. I have met the most amazing, unselfish people.”
And he has learned he must plough back, literally and metaphorically. “Human and animal health and wellness depend on soil health. But it also has the solution to the water crisis, climate change, global warming, acidification of oceans, dying corals, pollution.”
By working on the soil biology, he says, “we have an ever-increasing food web being created on the farm. Just by greening the planet and increasing humus in the soil all these problems can be reversed as it will sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and put it back in the soil.”
He’s doing his bit for the ecology, revitalising the soil, recharging groundwater, (and helping the village do so too), supporting the local school. “Whatever we’re doing has to be fair to everybody, to ecology, the microorganisms, the tribals, and to me.” Perhaps the biggest lesson is perseverance. : you cannot rush nature, he now knows, and he surrenders to it. “When the trees in the farm begin to die, all I say is, ‘I am leaving this to you and doing the best I can,’ and they somehow survive.” Nature decides what needs to grow where. “The more I work in nature the more I realise my insignificance in its magnificent plan. I give 100% and Nature decides if it is acceptable or not. I just accept the results.”
He looks around, marvelling at how his trees have attracted many species of birds, butterflies, even five to six species of bees. “We also have snakes on the farm, and thanks to them, mongooses. It's a step forward every time.”
Every day he learns something new. “You are walking through the farm, and suddenly you see a small nest with three eggs in it. Or a beehive in the middle of nowhere. How does one describe that?”
