When the peaceful and serene village of St Estevam came into the scope of real
estate developers, the villagers decided to take matters into their own hands
in order to ward off their intentions of buying the land. It was a revolution
of a different nature because it involved a lot of hard work, including
literally toiling in the fields. It was the start of the community farming
module in Goa, which is now being replicated by different villages after the
success in St Estevam.
An electronic engineer by profession, Nestor Rangel, originally
from St Estevam, decided to take the initiative last year, during the monsoons.
“Over the last 40-50 years, people of St Estevam have been giving up their land
and nobody knew where their land was. We downloaded each and every Form XIV of
the village. We identified 60 per cent of the people and approached them about
cultivating the land that had been lying fallow. Dr Manohara, a scientist from
ICAR, gave us GRS-1 seeds that made up for 60 per cent of the produce, while
the remaining 40 per cent was Jyoti parboiled brown rice. We ploughed 5 lakh
square metres of land with the help of government and private tractors. We
decided to do it in a mechanical way and not to use labour. The next step was
to transplant the saplings. Service providers like Fr George Quadros of Don
Bosco did our transplanting. One machine can cover 25,000-35,000 square metres
in a day and it costs Rs 2 per square metre. We started transplanting in the
first week of June 2018,” explains Nestor. The project was funded by 500
villagers.
The farmers received a lot of help from the government as they
received free seeds for sowing, subsidy on tractor usage, support price for
rice and subsidy on transplanting machines besides whatever subsidies were
available for cultivation of paddy. They intend on going in for the community
farming scheme this year.
After the cultivation, the next step was processing the paddy in
a factory in Kudal, Maharashtra, where one can easily process 50,000 kilos of
paddy at a time. We got the produce in October with 90,000 kilos of paddy. We
plan on increasing the ploughing land to 10 lakh square metres this year,” says
Nestor.
Once the paddy was processed, the rice was given back to the
villagers. “We gave the villagers 10 per cent dividend on their money and still
had a surplus of rice with us. Since we lack storage space, we decided to sell
the rice. It was an effort of collective farming and social marketing. We had a
better marketing network as the problem with farmers is poor marketing skills.
We know how to produce but don’t know to sell,” adds Nestor.
This is where Avertano Miranda, a senior journalist and the
co-founder of Goa Green Brigade, stepped in. His first message on social media
went viral and within two weeks, they managed to sell 40,000-50,000 kilograms
of rice, which even reached Dubai and the UK. “We have created an alternative
marketing channel by eliminating the middle man, which is unique in India.
There is a survey done in the market that shows that Goa consumes 25 crore
kilograms of rice every month, but it’s all white rice. We have to change the
perception as white rice is useless. It is just carbohydrates laced with
chemicals, which has no nutritional value. Brown rice is organic produce with Vitamin
B6, which contains antioxidants and is good for diabetes and digestion. We have
priced the rice at just Rs 40 in order to bring about awareness,” says
Avertano, adding that the prices may be increased after a period of time.
With the rise in demand, the brown rice grown at St Estevam ran
out a long time ago and then Goa Green Brigade urged farmers in different parts
of Goa to supply their Jyoti parboiled brown rice. But they were very
particular about how the rice was grown. “We have clearly mentioned that the
rice has to be grown with minimal use of fertilisers and is completely free of
any pesticides and weedicides. We are planning to do organic certification in
Goa, which is done overseas and is a very expensive process. We will do lab
tests, documentation and testing as there is no agency to do organic
certification in Goa,” adds Avertano.
It
is interesting to see the pattern change as people are now used to this habit
of consuming brown rice and the supply has to be met. “A lot of people are replicating
this model in their villages. It will become a movement once everyone starts
farming. We are waiting for the first rains to start the project. We are
appealing to farmers to grow paddy and we are willing to take up their produce.
We are expecting 3 lakh produce this year,” says Nestor with optimism.
