Fauji Mandis
Agriculture : Agriculture is not the same today as it was a few centuries ago, leave alone when man started realizing the value of land and turned settlers rather than hunter gatherers. That’s when man started settling down growing fruits, vegetables, grain and livestock. Agriculture was always about growing for one’s own family and for self sustenance. Not today or a couple of centuries ago. The colonial powers focused on cash crops like tea, coffee, cotton, cocoa & sugar in their colonies. Eventually with rising populations, agriculture and animal husbandry started becoming a source of income for the small farmer, common man and for traders. It was then, that agricultural communities started getting dumped with chemicals, fertilisers, pesticides and performance enhancing chemicals – aka poison. The food wars had begun. It became all about growing more with less land and lesser resources and also for more and more people. Dwindling land holdings, a rush towards urban and semi urban centers and also better work and life opportunities, started drawing the younger populations from villages to towns and cities. This made the available manpower scarce and hence the smaller farmers started getting marginalized. He could grow more produce with the locally available poison but didn’t know where and how to sell it. That’s where we are today.
Faujis : Faujis start joining the Services by the age of 17. They also retire early. Typically faujis start retiring from the age of 42 for officers and about 32 years for other ranks. As a result, there are about 35 Lakh retired fauji pensioners in our country today. Faujis come from all walks of life and most of them are from small towns, villages and a lesser number from the cities. Post retirement faujis start returning to their villages, settle down and start a life with their parents & families. Most families in India still have land holdings in villages however small. But farming as a profession is not taken seriously. Climate change, global warming, uncertainties of weather, acidification of soil & water, have all taken their toll on agriculture. Land holdings have become smaller as populations choose nuclear families because of many constraints. This will continue to be the trend in the foreseeable future. Farming is seen to be a laborious profession and considered as absolutely the last resort meant for the labour class or the under privileged or uneducated. That’s where the problem lies.
Mandis : In our country, it appears that it may actually be far easier for a farmer to export his agri produce than to sell it in another distant state. Traditional farming methods, quality of land, climatic & weather conditions, religious and cultural beliefs & practices, show a very stark differences in the food habits of one state from another. Adjacent states may however still have a lot of commonalities but North, South, East and North East are distinctly and overwhelmingly different in their growing and consumption patterns.
Land : India has about 33 Lakh Sq km, about 3.3 Million Sq km of land. Russia has 17 Million, Canada 9.9, China 9.7, US 9.3, Brazil 8.5 and Australia 7.7 Million. Globally, agricultural land, comprising cropland and permanent meadows/pastures, covers approximately 4.8 billion hectares, or about 38% of the Earth's land surface. Cropland accounts for roughly one-third, while the remaining two-thirds are used for grazing livestock.
Far as agricultural land or arable land is concerned, India has the largest quantity in the world. 53% amounting to 17.6 Lakh Sq Km out of 33, US with 17% has 16.8 Lakh Sq Km arable land out of 93 and so on.
But clearly the problem is that despite having more than half the land as agriculture land or cultivable land our lands are increasingly becoming fallow and incrementally unused. On the other hand there are people who want to live and work in the agriculture and allied fields but have no land of their own. We support a combined effort in agriculture by the community approach inspired by the Israeli kibbutz system. When communities engage in agriculture together and live in these areas their lives becomes one of mutual support and easy to live by.
Fauji Mandis : This project is our small endeavour to give the retired faujis a helping hand post their retirement, to give them a support in their livelihoods and to contribute to a green circular, poison free agrarian economy.