A journey towards sustainable lifestyle, co-existing with mother nature would certainly involve coming across information on soil, nutrients, sunlight permaculture, microclimate, irrigation and microbes. How an individual processes that information and generates their own perception that we call knowledge depends on their life journey, values, ethics and conditioning. This is where we get to understand the limitations of education, especially how the conventional education system blocks the individual’s evolution leading to profound wisdom. And this video certainly has all these factors subtly included somewhere deep down in the philosophy followed by the pioneers of the method.
Personally I am not a follower of any renowned or famous individual, but my life’s philosophy and journey has been influenced by many, whose philosophy could be understood effortlessly, especially when their language is simple and strong enough to get the attention of anyone who is out to understand the fundamentals of mother nature’s ecosystem. And then all one has to do is to slow their thought process a bit, and observe the patterns. One such personality is Deepak Sachde ji.
Although there are many in India who talk about native agri methods involving cow dung and urine, not all can effortlessly combine the method in sequence similar to mother nature’s way of life. Most of them are impatient to wait longer, the biggest limitation when it comes to working with natural ecosystems. How to integrate sunlight with carbon, water, nutrients, microbes and plant life is an art and the artist gains their knowledge by just observation. Coming to the most important player in the entire process, we cannot ignore the role played by microbes, and reviving microbial life is the fundamental intention of this process, and Deepak ji’s wisdom revolves around that factor.
Let me try to share an analogy of the method before appreciating the process. Imagine a situation where a malnutritioned woman gets pregnant, and delivers a child after 9 months. What do you think will be the health condition of that child? Unless nature’s evolution exhibits some unexpected anomaly, the child will be physically weak and would need many supplements while growing up. That’s how modern day agriculture works.
Now let’s change the scenario and think holistically for a better method for the child’s future. The woman is taken care of well, fed nutritious food for months bringing her to a healthy state with a healthy body and mind, and then she conceives. Similar care is given for 9 months and then a healthy child will be born. This child should ideally grow up with lesser external support when it comes to physical health. This is where the method of increasing the microbial life matters.
The woman is the soil, the child is the plant. The conventional method involves depriving basic life to the soil, growing the plants on supplements like fertiliser and pesticides and other external interference like nutrients, and then the resulting produce is as lifeless as the soil. Now, what if we focus entirely on the soil first, much earlier before we plant the saplings or sow the seeds. Adding sufficient carbon, combined with the solution made from cow dung and cow urine, maintaining the right moisture and giving nature time to build life in the soil?
At the right time, the soil becomes abundant with microbial life, just like a healthy woman ready to conceive. And that’s when the process of plantation follows. The interesting part is that once the microbial life increases exponentially, any form of external interference becomes unnecessary. The plant gets almost everything it needs from the soil ecosystem and the resultant harvest that we consume becomes far more nutritious than those produced from conventional farming.
Understanding this simple, yet highly ignored fact is what makes agriculture sustainable in the long run. Our ancients followed it and that’s why we could inherit this planet with abundant resources. We have a choice to continue that philosophy or to continue with our ignorance leading to total collapse of the natural ecosystem resulting in severe health issues.
