Energy, Water and Natueco Farming-an interesting relationship

Energy, Water and Natueco Farming-an interesting relationship

This is a hypothesis that Natueco Farming has a strong correlation with how we use energy and water as a resource rather than how we do farming. We believe that the present day conventional farming may be productive and high yielding in the short run but in terms of water and energy use, it is highly inefficient and it is this inefficiency that is the root cause of all problems associated with farming in the long run. Example of Punjab is the most relevant.

Background

We define productivity of a farm (called ‘Visible Productivity’) as drymass/ per hectare which is a combined effect of ‘Primary Productivity’ and ‘Secondary Productivity’.‘Primary Productivity’ by definition is the productive efficiency of land without any external input while ‘Secondary Productivity’ is defined as the incremental productivity achieved over and above the primary because of external inputs like water(brought in from outside), fertilizers, pesticides, transportation etc. Secondary therefore is a multiplier of the primary.

The Metrics

‘Primary Productivity’ is measured in terms of output efficiency (drymass/ per hectare/KL  of water consumed) while ‘Visible Productivity’ is measured in terms of gross output.(drymass/per hectare).Hence it is very much possible that while ‘Visible Productivity’ seems to be going up, the underlying ‘Primary Productivity’ is going down sharply.

Today’s Scenario

So far all our efforts have been to increase the ‘Visible Productivity’ by enhancing the ‘Secondary Productivity’ which in itself is perfectly sensible thing to do. We have so far got phenomenal results indeed. In fact the so called ‘Green Revolution’ has been all about increasing our ‘Visible Productivity’ through enhancing ‘Secondary Productivity’. Example of Punjab is the most glaring case of what we are talking. The enhanced ‘Secondary Productivity’ has given us a false sense of pride that ‘Visible Productivity’ is up. However, the reality was that the ‘Primary Productivity’ had been steadily going down all these years and we were unaware because our focus was just measuring the ‘Visible Productivity’.

The Problem

In the beginning the total ‘Visible Productivity’ can be easily increased by external inputs and all seems to be going good. However, over time an effort to increase ‘Secondary Productivity’ impairs our farm’s ‘Primary Productivity’ and we start seeing a decline in the ‘Visible Productivity’ even though external inputs are the same.

Our Hypothesis

Natueco methodology is a way to enhance the ‘Primary Productivity’ of a given land. In other words, it is a way to increase the drymass output per hectare per kilolitre of water consumed. We believe this is a very subtle but an extremely important point because the Sun’s energy can only be harvested optimally if the drymass output is maximized while minimizing the water consumption.

We believe that sustainable farming is all about the ‘Primary Productivity’ never ever being allowed to decline.

We also believe that if land is harvested at its most optimal levels of ‘Primary Productivity’, it WILL give maximum yield per hectare FOR EVER at the least input cost! So even financially and business wise it makes sense to protect the ‘Primary Productivity’. This has not been happening because to increase “Primary Productivity’, the multinationals don’t sell anything and therefore there is very little money made by the traders, politicians and businessmen!

To increase ‘Primary Productivity’ we just need an aware and alert farmer-called Natueco Farmer.