Double your yield, halve your trouble

WHEN Abner Chin declares that "I can grow a tomato plant out of a table," you better believe him. After all he is a leading expert on agriculture from Israel, the country which has made flowers like roses and chrysanthemums bloom in the heart of the desert. Israel occupies the third position in the global floriculture trade.

Faced with a hostile environment, Israel over the years has perfected the technology of protected agriculture, which allows it to extract the maximum yield out of limited resources. Today, the country is sharing its knowledge with other nations. Israeli farms have been replicated the world over and now India too is setting up a R&D and demonstration farm on similar lines to examine the viability of Israeli agricultural technology in the country.

The seeds of this project were sown in 1996 when the Indian and Israeli governments entered into an agreement to set up a collaborative R&D demonstration farm in India. While almost all of 1997 was spent in finalising the formal memorandum of understanding, this year has been devoted to creating the infrastructure for the venture. Scientists from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute and Israeli experts have been working in tandem to cultivate 15 hectares of land in the centre of the Capital. The land, situated on the premises of IARI’s Pusa facility, will constitute the core of this floriculture and horticulture project.

Tubewells have been dug, pipelines have been laid, polyhouses are being imported from Israel and the first crop is expected to be reaped by middle of next year.

Flowers such as roses, chrysanthemums and statice; fruits such as pears, mango, peaches, table grapes and others belonging to the citrus family; and vegetables like capsicum, onions, cucumbers and tomatoes will be cultivated at the farm. All these plant varieties are already available in India. What the project managers hope to demonstrate is the fact that much higher yields can be achieved if protected agriculture techniques are adopted.

Dr N.P. Sirohi, senior scientist, IARI, quotes the instance of tomatoes. "In India the average yield per hectare is about 60 tonnes, at best 70 tonnes; in Israel it is about 200 tonnes." Chin, deputy manager of the project, asserts that Indian farmers can look forward to doubling, even tripling, their produce if they adopt even the most basic protected agriculture techniques.

Eitan Neubauer, project manager, Indo-Israeli R&D Demo Farm, hopes "we will be able to prove that protected agriculture will benefit farmers commercially; that even after making the initial outlays required by protected agriculture, the farmers will make better profits."

The four levels of protected agriculture will be demonstrated at the test farm. The most basic level would involve the use of drip irrigation and fertigation techniques; cultivation would be undertaken in an open field but the plants would be irrigated through a system of pipes which would provide them water at the root zone at a drip-by-drip pace.

Irrigation of every plant would be ensured and there would be no water loss.Fertigation involves the mixing of fertilisers in water and distributing the mix through the drip irrigation channels. The common problem of fertilisers being flushed away by water is avoided by adopting this method. Chin estimates the cost of installing drip irrigation facilities at about Rs 60,000 per hectare but notes that the investment would be recoverable over a five-year period.

The second stratum is cultivation in net houses. Net structures are constructed over the fields providing the crop some protection. Next comes cultivation in light greenhouses.Simple polyhouses fitted with ventilation curtains and pest management facilities are set up for delicate crops.And on the highest end of the spectrum exists the heavy greenhouses, replete with temperature control, forced ventilation and pest control techniques. Although virtually insulated from nature’s vagaries, these greenhouses are heavy ticket items with every square metre involving an outlay of about $ 50.

Dr P.K. Singh, in charge of the project, explains that while the greenhouse technology is meant for the new-age entrepreneurs who view farming as an agri-business, small farmers can benefit from drip irrigation. Chin estimates that drip irrigation would lead to doubling of traditional produce and greenhouses would yield two to three times more than a drip-irrigated area. He notes that 15-20 years are generally spent in developing a high-yielding variety, instead India could invest intensively in drip irrigation and reap higher benefits in a much shorter time span.

The cost of the project is being shared in a 60:40 ratio between Israel and India. The land, however, is excluded from this formula. The Israeli government has committed Rs 6 crore and the Indian Council of Agricultural, Research Rs 3.1 crore to the project. Neubauer expects the final cost of the venture to be in the region of $ 2 million.

The venture, envisaged as a three-year project, extendible by another two years, is being implemented in two phases. While flowers and vegetables will be produced in the first phase, fruits are likely to be harvested in the second phase. Both Indian and Israeli varieties will be cultivated at the farm. Dr Singh hopes that the last two years of the project will be self-sustaining with the costs being met out of the profits realised from the sale of the farm produce.

Chin cautions that the fruits and vegetables produced at these farms would retail at prices higher than the normal market prices prevalent in Indian cities since "these are very high-quality products geared for the export market."

Already several agri-businessmen in the Maharashtra, Karnataka region are collaborating with Israeli companies to produce crops for exports. Israel hopes that the Pusa farm, a showcase for protected agriculture, would attract more farmers to adopt their technologies and thus generate more business for its companies.

India’s benefit is quite obvious. With its declining water table and deteriorating quality of water, the country cannot afford to continue its current practice of flood irrigation much longer. Although drip irrigation has already made inroads in the country, it has yet to become an established practice. As Chin says "water is a precious resource. Sooner or later India is bound to realise that flood irrigation is wasteful."