A tech-tonic shift

Just as agrarian distress is back in the public discourse, a highly readable memoir of a techie-turned-farmer offers an inside look at a farmer’s life and its attendant challenges. Venkat Iyer chronicles his transition from a hectic urban corporate life to the gentler pace of organic farming. It is, however, much more than an account of his personal journey — the memoir brings readers up close and personal with the lives that farmers lead, and the problems they face every day. 

When former IBM executive Mr Iyer moved to a village near Mumbai in 2004, he had no idea about organic farming. The first lesson he absorbed was that agriculture is best learnt through trial and error — it doesn’t come with a well-written user manual, or a convenient F1 or help tab like software. He gives an entertaining, but very insightful account of planting his maiden groundnut crop. When his wife and he bought sackfuls of groundnut seed, they were aghast to discover that the norm was to shell the groundnuts before planting the seeds. It would take the couple, they estimated, days of backbreaking labour to do this. Instead, Mr Iyer reasoned that if groundnuts were intended to be planted without their shells, nature would have created some way for the shells to come off without manual help. Much to the amused scepticism of their neighbours, the Iyers soaked the nuts overnight to soften the shells and planted the crop on December 31. Then they returned to Mumbai to ring in the New Year and pray that their crop would not be a disaster. Many in the village laughed at them but soon realised that the joke was on them when the author and his wife managed to harvest 18 sacks of groundnuts, way ahead of the village standard of 10 to 12 sacks for the same amount of nuts sown. 

On the other hand, Mr Iyer’s first harvest of rice was way below par, and this helped him understand the difficulties farmers face in marketing their produce. Though they bear the cost of sowing, watering, weeding, harvesting and cleaning their produce, the bulk of the profits go to traders who sell the produce in the city. The author, who had invested his life’s savings into the farm and wanted to earn what he could from every harvest, decided to experiment with a new marketing route. He decided to sell, whenever possible, his produce directly to extended friends and family. At Rs 20 a kg, his rice harvest sold out in a couple of days. He realised, however, that the proceeds did not even cover the cost of production. 

Consuming food grain and cooking oil straight from the source made the author realise how much adulteration there was in the market. When the author began selling pure groundnut oil to his friends and family, the demand for it was such that his farm broke even for the first time.

Another of Mr Iyer’s experiments was to revive a local rice varietal. Although delicious and aromatic, it had gone out of fashion with local farmers because of its longer crop cycle. In their quest for squeezing in a second crop, local farmers preferred shorter duration hybrids, which required more water, fertiliser and pesticides. The author painstakingly traced the rare seeds, but his crop failed because of excessive rainfall. Over time, agrarian life had made him more philosophical, and one failed experiment simply led to other experiments. 

The inevitable comparisons with his earlier life at IBM led to some interesting takeaways. Time, for instance, acquired a whole new level of slowness: When a particular crop experiment did not work well, he had to wait for the next season to try and rectify his mistakes. Farming not only brought this city-bred techie close to nature, but also coaxed him to modify his beliefs. When Mr Iyer couldn’t get his lemon tree to fruit, he tried all the remedies his obliging neighbours suggested — which included burying the fresh entrails of a goat around the tree and unnecessarily excising its stem. All to no avail. Eventually his mentor, an experienced natural farmer, said that the solution was simple. Mr Iyer needed to apologise to his tree. Although it went against his scientific temper, he eventually did so. The tree immediately began fruiting lemons the size of cricket balls.

Rural life wasn’t always this idyllic. Mr Iyer writes about the corruption that the mostly illiterate farmers around him dealt with every day, even to avail of government entitlements. The author also highlights the critical lack of access to medical facilities for farmers. Compared to the cities where he has lived and worked, hospital infrastructure in his village is practically non-existent.

Mr Iyer’s memoir makes a thought-provoking case for moving from a consumption-heavy to production-rich lifestyle. As the reader follows the author’s transformation from urban techie to rural rookie to passionate organic farmer, the gradual reduction of his expenditure on clothes, travel, entertainment and other “necessities” becomes increasingly evident. Written in a lucid, engaging style, this is a book everyone should read for its insights into the lives of India’s faceless, voiceless farmers of India — and the seductive lure of a back-to-basics existence.

Moong over Microchips 

Adventures of a Techie-Turned-Farmer

Venkat Iyer

Viking

256 pages; Rs 499