Located in the quite fields of Adibandh-Assolna, Nester is busy working on his fields, mending the fence and overlooking the growing of crops as he prepares through the monsoon. He looks at his 10,000 sq.mts of land and tells us how he toiled through the last three years but he’s very satisfied with what he has achieved.
Nester Sanches pursued B.SC at Chowgule College, Margao and then took up his further studies in Law hoping to pursue his law degree. But his influences to the books he read in economics, finances, farming, governance, India’s economy, agriculture is what led him to think differently.
“It’s then that I started thinking about farming and I knew we had a family-owned agricultural field in Assolna and I thought, I could begin, though I had no expertise, no family support and nobody’s backing but I wanted to plunge into farming,” explains a passionate Nester.
Nester tells us how he had no fence in the place and his first crop was destroyed by cattle. And how his fence was rammed by bulls and he was back to square one.
“On this property, I had no electricity, I had bought the wrong pipes to put the barbed wire and the cattle broke it. I had no equipment, no tractor, actually nothing but a few seeds,” asserted Nester who remembers what he began from three years back.
But today over the years Nester boasts of a good fencing which he laid himself, a small farmhouse on the property that he build, a well which he excavated, crops growing, solar lamps and many more facilities and all that which he installed himself with help of some manual labour.
Nester’s friends tell us how he broke every savings of his and sold his own personal assets to keep his love for farming alive.
“I made small profits. I have sold rice and sweet potatoes from my farm and I am slowly growing and understanding yield and caring for crops. I am glad that all this is my own effort, and I am confident that farming will be the next big thing,” explains Nester who now understands food supply, the granary stock in India and the depleting stock because of government freebies of grain to the economically backward and food scarcity.
Nester travails daily from his Aquem-Margao flat where he still faces the flak of his parents and neighbours of what he chose to do with his career at the young age of 26 years. Now at 29 and a few months away from breaking the 30-year old jinx, Nester toils daily on his farm with his farm implements. His days involve negotiating an electricity connection with his neighbours, protecting his crop from cattle, growing and spending time on the farm. But he is happy he chose a life like this.
