Grow food

NOTE: To read about the book ''My Fantastic Failures'', read the post Jun 29.

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For... Grow Food.
Read on...

It isn’t Amazon, Flipkart, digital market places, shops and malls that give us food ! 

No one can explain it better than this man from Art of Living. If you understand Hindi, it would be nothing like watching him talk. In good humor and brilliant satire he has said it all. Hang on till the end. 

Else, read this article. I have made an attempt to summarize what he has to say. 

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Food comes from farms. Someone grows it. Can that someone be you? No, can’t be! Because I have to do job. 

And why do I have to grow food. It will come from somewhere. Someone is growing it, right? Since that someone else is doing farming, food will keep coming. 

So let us forget about doing farming ourselves. But did we think about the farmer who grows the food. Apart from the times when we hear he is dying ! It isn’t we are insensitive. We feel for them. We support them. We donate money, we share news on social media, we discuss the issue in our living room and we shed tears too though it is a different story that very soon we move on. 

Why we move on? Because we think if he is dying, it isn’t our fault. What wrong I did? I don’t even know who he is then how can I be responsible in him dying. But the truth is, we are also responsible. Educated people are not doing farming that is why farmers are dying.
How are we responsible and how can we help? 

None of us who is educated is doing farming. In villages, those who are educated till class 10 also, come to cities to work. They will do labor work in city but will not live a life of a farmer in village. So only the most illiterate person is left to do farming. He is weak in body and education. He does not know how to express himself. How can he go and talk in government office to find out about subsidies. He doesn’t know the technology either. That is why despite hard work and despite producing the most important thing for the survival of a living creature, he is the one who is dying.
 
250 farmers die every day. Past 16 years, 12 lakh farmers committed suicide. 2500 farmers leaving farming every day. And we, who have seen the world, are multi lingual, survive and thrive on google, are terrific marketing professionals with highest degrees, can sell anything to anyone, anywhere on the world – don’t want to help them.
 
Giving money will not help. The situation can improve only when the educated people does farming. It is a matter of choice today but soon it will be a necessity. If we need to eat, we will have to grow. If we don’t grow, our kids will have to grow because since 2012, production of wheat has gone down and it is said, no matter what it is not going to come up. Next production of other things like rice etc. will decrease.
 
And we think, we are making progress –
 
No matter how big is the farmer, he will not let his son do farming. Also, whoever has strength in body and who has barely managed to pass in village school comes to city. That is why, people are not available to do farming. But you would have never heard that there is scarcity of labor in city for construction of buildings. Even a toilet in the city didn’t close down because no one was there to clean it but our farmlands are getting closed. 

Money is important but not most important. We forget, money gets health insurance not health. Gets food poisoning not food. Medical is not health care it is sick care. If we are healthy why will we take medicine? Farming makes us healthy. 

We thank God we are settled. Helping someone else to do their business, means settled to us. And our families are happy and proud of us. But still we are not happy. Going to job every morning is not something we like. It is true, it is very difficult to find a job and then keep doing it. We can do job but farming to us is suicide, pesticide, poverty. Farming is truly difficult. For that matter, nothing is easy also in this world. 

If we don’t want to do farming, why don’t we stop eating. We cant stop eating but we have stopped growing. We think food will come from shops or malls. If not in one, then in next mall I will find organic. We find organic not by searching but by growing. 

We wish to go to city, city to onsite, those in cities say… let's go to Mars. There is nothing good left on this earth. And who goes doesn’t come back? Has anyone who went to city returned? 

As a result, family ties have also weakened. It is only after many years when kids have holidays and they say, let’s go to grandfather’s village people come to village. They consider it not their home also. They say grandfather’s place. There is no warmth in the relations these days. Height of insensitivity is when people are not able to differentiate between buffaloes and cows. Looking at cycle we don’t say is it a car. Touching dung makes us infected. 

Progress is petrol pumps coming to villages, proliferation of packaged food, sending children to cities, cities to onsite etc. And when we send our children to cities we say take care of your health. But do we realize, it is oxymoron. Because we are saying take care of your health but don’t do farming. 

We are moving towards total laziness. No one wants to grow food. There is a shortage of food, water. We need to plan for them. Onions often have shortage. Prices soar high. Let us try growing it. We can grow it very easily. But we care least. We eat, pack the waste in polythene and throw it like it has gone to moon. 

As much as growing food is important, garbage management is important too. Do we realise, blaming the government and segregating it does not solve the matter. The garbage from our kitchen that we throw ferments and turn into methane and cause cancer. And if we all take the responsibility of the waste coming out of our kitchen, we can turn 55% of our waste into healthy fertilizer. 

It is time, we start planning for food and water. Water level has also gone down considerably. It is scientifically proven that higher the population of cow is higher will be the water level. If we return to farming, population of cows will also increase. Production and quality of milk will improve. 

Let us not say we cant alone do anything for our – mother nature, mankind, world, country, our future generation.
 
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar says, it is the good people who have more contribution in spoiling the world. We have no network. We are confined to our busy lives. We think only about ourselves, our family, our health insurance etc. We do not know who lives in our neighborhood. Terrorists are better. They are handful but they have rocked the world. They thrive on the brilliant network they have built. 

We too need to embrace each other, come together and make a network to bring a change in our lifestyle, dreams and aspirations. 

Let us plant trees, do our individual garbage management, use less plastic, save water, don’t bargain with vendors etc.
 
Plant Trees – In a lifetime a person uses 20 trees. For each of our family member and on occasions in family, let us plant trees. We are free to plant trees, no one will stop us. If you have space constraint, grow plants like tomatoes, coriander, celery in pots. It will be like growing your own food. Also, place bird baths in your garden.
 
Reduce the use of plastic and participate in garbage management by turning the waste from our kitchens into organic fertilizer which can be used to grow healthy food in our kitchen gardens and pots of our terraces.
 
Save water. Don’t let the water running from taps while brushing our teeth and washing utensils. Water does not come from malls. It comes from underground. Also, reduce the use of leather. Population of cows impacts the water level. Also, cow dung is the best fertilizer for farming. 

Buy from the small vendors and don’t bargain. They earn for their living and not to save. We can be of great help in their survival. Not only we will help them, we can help ourselves too. The fruits and vegetables they sell may look dirty, covered with mud but it is organic. It is healthy. Whereas the big size, shining fruits and vegetables we buy from big retailers that have stickers on them are grown extra large with the help of harmful fertilizers. And that extra shine comes from the wax polish. The fertilizers and polish have harmful content. It causes cancer.
 
And unlike the world, in India, farmers who grow the food are the poorest. Let us empower them. Let us stop thinking that food will come from somewhere. Let us grow food ourselves and help the farmers to grow it too. 

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Note: The above article is the documentation based on the video from the ashram of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

The book My Fantastic Failures also buttresses the importance of Entrepreneurship. 

My Fantastic Failures book is about college courage, dreams, failures, ENTREPRENEURSHIP and a relationship.

It has been released in India and internationally.
Grab your copy from Amazon (http://amzn.to/1LeWta9) or Flipkart (http://bit.ly/1cLkAyb)