Namaskaram!
It is our intention to introduce to you certain people who cut a new path towards restoration of our environment, and that is what we are doing from time to time. Today we introduce Mr Anil Kumar. He took his Mechanical Engineering degree from the College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram, in 1978, subsequently joined the Agriculture Department, and retired as the MD of Bamboo Corporation in 2012. Since then, he has invested his time and energy in maintaining the wetland area that his wife inherited as ancestral property.
The general trend is to do landfilling and put up buildings on such lands but he has maintained the wetland and even planted mangroves here to make this place self-sufficient. Let us listen to what he himself has to say about it. Sir, it is commonplace for Mechanical engineers to shift to Electronics and Computers. Shifting to agriculture is a rare phenomenon. Can you tell us how that happened?
My coming to agriculture was not accidental. Mine was a farming family. My mother’s ancestral house is Kudumbamon in Chenneerkara village (in Pathanamthitta district). When I was five years old, my elder uncle gave me a small shovel, and I used to walk around trying to till and clear our plot. In my childhood I did not play with a mobile phone, a machine gun or other plastic toys, like the kids of today. Instead, I pottered around in the company of my uncles in the garden plot of ours. So when I thought of post-retirement plans, I felt like returning to the field of farming. My experience through the years have also helped me.
The usual trend is to fill the land. That is easier too.
I think it was during 1980-85 period that more and more paddy fields in the midlands, hilly areas and coastal plains started shrinking drastically. There were various reasons. Global warming and sea surges made farming in coastal areas almost impossible. Changes in the social environment, excessive greed for financial benefits and seeking out of ways to get rich quick – all these made agriculture a non-profitable business. This led to sale of land. My thoughts went in a different direction. I thought of ways to revive our environment and create a model. I did not proceed as per carefully laid-out plans. If you ask me whether all that you see here today was in my mind 12 years back, my answer will be ‘No’.
This was how I turned to mangrove cultivation. I had two options: one, fill the wetland and sell it; two, maintain it and convert it into something useful. I chose the second option. But it could not be done overnight. It was a long-term process. I happened to tell Trivedi Babu IFS, my friend in the Forest Department, that I owned a plot of wetland, and asked him what quick-growing plants I could raise there. He spoke to me about mangroves. The very next day, with the help of a few officers in the Social Forestry Department of Alappuzha, he procured 200 mangrove saplings, and brought them here. I checked for the responsiveness of the saplings in the water here. Then there was no looking back.
This project is something that can become a financial liability. What you have done is revive a huge segment of land. But the returns you get are nothing, compared to what you would have received had you sold it. You have revived and improved the land so that it is beneficial to the residents of this area too. What means have you adopted in order to recover your invested money?
When I started this project, I didn’t know it would turn out to be so expensive. The first step was to prepare the land, and then plant and raise mangrove saplings on all four sides of the pond. In order to make some income, I grew fish in the pond. I didn’t know anything about fish farming then. So I consulted experts in the field. Later, I learnt a lot from my practical experience. Today there are nine species of mangroves here. Initially, I couldn’t even recognize one. So the mangroves grew on all sides of the bund. Then I planted cashew trees and coconut palms. These three activities went on simultaneously – in water and on land.
Thereafter, close to the house, I constructed a cow shed and grew indigenous species of cow, goat, hen, duck and so on, as part of integrated farming. But all that ran into losses. So I had to give them up. Fish farming was profitable right from the beginning. I had to introduce small fry into the pond only in the first couple of years. Later they grew, their numbers multiplied, and that continues to this day.
As for the mangroves, after seven or eight years, I started getting seeds from the plants. I raised the saplings and began to sell them. Now, I’ve succeeded in creating a productive ecosystem. Compared to other plants, mangroves absorb 5 % more carbon from the atmosphere and keep it underground. So there is carbon credit at work here, although it is not popular in Kerala or India as of now. If I were to get it, I would be a millionaire! As per current international standards, one-and-a-half tonnes of carbon from one hectare of land gets sequestrated. And the value is five to ten US dollars per tonne of carbon. I hope to get that credit someday.
There is tourist potential here. There are two ways of viewing this place. One, where revival of environment has been accomplished by putting up mangroves and generating income from it. Two, as a study centre where children and interested people can come to learn more about mangroves. We have fixed charges for the visits – Rs 1,000 for a students’ group of 50-60 individuals, and Rs 2,500 for a small group and the fee includes permission for videography too.
The corona pandemic caused substantial losses. So we turned to farm tourism as a last resort. Earlier, I had no plans to let this place out for tourism. But now, I want to convert this into a tourism product. I get good support from the local panchayat. In fact, the panchayat office encourages people to make visits to this place.
The work that Mr Anil Kumar has done is not something that common people can do. His academic and professional backgrounds as well as his contacts with high officials in the farming and other sectors have played a role in his success. But if Nature is not maintained properly, Kerala will cease to exist. Even today, Nature is all that Kerala can call its own. Let there be more people like him to take care of it. Our attempt is to build a network of such like-minded people. Let me thank him for the time he set aside for us. See you shortly.