In August 2005 I spent three delightful days with Dr Lux Lakshmanan and his wife Chitra at Davis, California. Lux drove over a hundred miles showing me miles upon miles of farms flush with a variety of agricultural produce – tomato, almond, pistachio, cantaloupe, corn…Blocks of farms, 160 acres each, were brimming with tomatoes. These were mechanically harvested and conveyed to large bins in trucks moving along with the harvester in parallel. Each truck had two bins each with 25 tonne capacity (at Koyambedu wholesale market I had seen heaps of tomatoes of a couple of hundred kilos at the most!). I admired large number of workmen harvesting cantaloupes in hundreds, packing them and loading them in large trucks and the vast tracts of almond farms – yes, California accounts for bulk of the global production of almonds-lush with produce!
Till deep…
It was precious education for me on the US agricultural prosperity built on science, technology and management. With passion Lux explained the several scientific practices that contributed to the profuse production, transportation, processing and marketing. The agronomical practices covered simple, common sense issues like nurturing beehives to aid pollination, creation of wind barriers by planting fast-growing tall trees… I also had a demonstration of the ancient Tamil saying: ahala uzhuvadilum aazha uzhu – the importance of tilling deep, not easy to attempt with wooden ploughs hauled by animal power and not even by our small/medium capacity tractors.
The visit expanded my interest in agriculture manifold. In quick time it resulted in the setting up of the Agriculture Consultancy Management Foundation (ACMF) in 2006.
Lux has varied and rich experience. After his PG degree from the Annamalai University, he spent three years teaching in Rangoon and migrated to the US for his Ph D degree in Agronomy from the Ohio State University. He also worked for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of United Nations in Vienna for over five years. In 1979 Lux founded an agriculture consulting company: California Agriculture Consulting Service (CACS) provides consultancy services to farmers on scientific crop production.
Successful e-farming…
Media magnate (of Ananda Vikatan), S Balasubramanian, a great enthusiast in horticulture, utilised the services of Lux for e-farming. Through the internet, Balan had daily contact with Lux and adopting the US practices, achieved quantum jumps in production; around 40 tonnes of tomato and 25 tonnes of capsicum per acre with similar high yields in a number of other vegetables.
Disappointingly, the success is confined to a handful of farms in India. Lux continues his passion for productivity improvements and regularly shares his views through comments on farming in India. Several of these are incisive, extremely important and blunt. He is critical of reports on inane ideas on productivity improvements, marketing… We provide samples of some of these:
Marketing is not just a major problem of Indian farmers. More important is crop productivity which is so low. Only increased crop yield per acre will pull the farmers out of poverty. Global companies interested in helping poor farmers should bring with them international crop production scientists and specialists to teach and demonstrate improved crop productivity.
Dairy farmers can significantly increase milk yields of cows. At present the average daily milk yield of an Indian cow is about six litres compared to 35-40 litres in developed countries. The increase can be achieved not through the widely advocated breeding by artificial insemination but by providing more nutritious feed for dairy cows. The energy from the feed is used first for the biological needs of proper functioning of various internal organs of the cow; the balance energy in the feed is used for the cow’s movement and only the remaining energy in the feed goes into milk production. Energy from the feed of Indian cows (that include cinema posters) is very low to produce milk. A good feed should have 60 per cent corn silage, 35 per cent alfaalfa hay and food supplements.
Include milk products in the mid-day meal for children. The protein from milk will help in the mental and physical development of the child. India’s average per capita protein intake is just 10 grams per day compared to the minimum requirement of 50 grams. Protein in human diet is essential to build muscles, to provide stamina and strength for human activities including sports. Milk is a complete protein that contains all the 22 essential amino acids needed for body growth. Until the nutrition needs of children are met in full, export of milk products should be banned.
Pineapples are grown in the western ghats of south India. More recently there is a profuse of production in Tripura. The fruit is not only delicious but also nutritious. It has fairly good keeping qualities; this can be further enhanced by the use of higher quantum of potassium in soils where they are grown. In countries like the Philippines the fruit is dehydrated, not by drying it in the sun, but by a special process to remove moisture and enhance its flavour. The dehydrated fruit is popular in the US and European countries. India can seek the assistance of the Philippines to set up dehydration plants and work on joint marketing arrangements.
