Good advice. Be it India, Africa or the UK if anyone follows that you won’t go far wrong.
Thanks this is great info.
Thanks, this community is so nice and welcoming, im soo glad i started this thread. I deffo feel like keeping this going and making sure i get some updates in here on a regular basis and maybe link to a blog or something once i am out there.
I've commented on this before, I rarely travel by taxi, but when I do it's mainly a Leicester taxi and many of their drivers are British Asian with family (grandparents/uncles/father/brother etc) in India or Pakistan, where they still own a farm, or they had a farm until recently. I love those taxi rides, because we get talking about all sorts of things like milking, growing different crops, land values etc etc and they say about getting homesick when they arrive at our farm. Some of them are cutting their rural ties by selling out their share of the farm, whereas others say it would be quite nice to return or keep it in the family some way. Good luck to you!
Hey all,
So just a quick update, unfortunately I've not made much progress with this at all!
I was planning to go out to India between June-Sept this year to get a little feel for things and test the water but due certain commitments (that I can't get away from for now) its not been possible. So I've pushed things back to a few weeks between Nov-Mar.. and then a longer stint out there after that. Will have to see, totally gutted about this but thats life for you! Just gotta bat what the cosmos throws at you straight back and carry on!! Definitely not going to give up on this and once i book the tickets I'll be updating this more regularly with pictures and detailed updates, hoping to maybe spend some time helping out in some schools as well which will be interesting. Generate some interest from specialists who want to share some advice and really get this moving forward not just from a water irrigation perspective but a complete overhaul of the current practices out there.
Meanwhile, I've been keeping myself and me kids very busy!! We are thoroughly enjoying tinkering with robotics, especially line of sight drones, first person view custom drones that we buy 2nd hand, break, and then rebuild. One thing thats got me really excited is arduPilot and the possibilities seem endless!! My mind is always on this mission i've set myself. I've contacted quite a few UK based robotics, agri-tech companies but no one seems interested in this little open source project, its a shame but i'll keep plodding along and see how things progress. I'll post some links of the kind stuff that I am looking into for inspiration a bit later on today, right now i've got to take the 5 year to fight club otherwise shes gonna club me if we are late!
Cheerio!!
Thanks BoB, I don't know if you've read the book "sapiens, a brief history of human kind" but this touches on human evolution, the journey from hunter gatherers, to farmers to city dwellers, etc.... really eye opening book and also touches on what you've just mentioned about 1 step forward, 4 backwards in different ways. The scenario is very unique for my endeavour where the area that my family originally come from say 100 years ago - we are all farmers by trade (and we still have connections to people there), personally we migrated away quite a few times for different reasons but our roots are still there so any agri-technological (open source) methods that i can incubate..... that will make life easier for these guys and my family.... has to come with education as a cornerstone for old and young. And there is a lot of us, i mean ALOT of us... all with farms. Anyway, my retirement plan is to eventually retire into farming and education over in India so i think i have a good road map. And primarily only deal with friends and family. initially. and then see if we can grow from there over a long period of time. Right now i just want to start this slow transition but just getting out there is the hard part especially with a young family over here. So yeah caution noted mate. Hopefully i get there eventually!!!
Thanks man, that sounds amazing and ill deffo be researching it! I think there is Croptech in November as well? I know i missed one in June that i was gutted about when i found out afterwards but hey theres always next time.
Thanks, this is really useful info as well and in a very similar climate so super helpful! Will check this out as well.
www.youtube.com
www.dronefromchina.com
Yes i will deffo be keeping this updated, so it looks like I will be out to India early next year and the updates will be coming through then much more frequently. Obviously i'll post pictures, videos, write updates etc to show the kind of challenges we're dealing with. Hoping to do some volunteering in some schools as well and really promote education, robotics and the opportunity that agricultural robotics presents for India.
1%???Having just got back from a 3 weekholiday there, I saw a lot of farming but would not claim to have any in depth knowledge.
It did seem a huge amount was done by hand using some practices which would be very hard work for someone not born and bought up to it..
The bulk of crop weeding seemed to be done by hand and the weeds taken back to the farm to be chopped up that night to feed the cow(s).
The cow dung, would be mixed with chopped straw made into patties and left to dry in the sun for cooking fuel. This was all done by hand
I understand that farms are limited to 45 acres by law so this strctly limits mechanisation and we only saw 2 combines in a journey of perhaps a 1,000 miles. Most crops are cut by hand , then fed into into a stationery thresher.
I would be dubious about claims of organic, other countries have decidedly different ideas to what we think it implies. Insects such as locusts require a very strong defence or they will decimate a crop .
Years ago people starved, today it is not acceptable.
You are correct that flood irrigation is the norm even for crops such as wheat and obviously rice needs very large quantities of water, but the monsoon brings huge quantites. As you rightly say there is a heavy reliance on Tanks ( reservoirs ) and wells.
I should not worry about burning crop residues, you wait till you see the brick yard stacks smoking away. We did not see any stubble burning as the straw was far too valuable, much chopped to go into the bricks!
Most of India can grow a huge range of crops due to the temperature but you have to remember the value of the produce is very low compared to Britain probably 1-5% of what you would expect to pay in the UK , so sadly you are unlikely to make very big sums.
If I was going to give any advice I would aim at tourism . We had a fantastic stay in Rhajastan in a village , it may seem boring to you, but plenty of Western people pay very big money for that sort of genuine experience.
I wish you luck Please keep us posted.
I did mean 1-5% of UK retail price
