Usha Shetty’s bare feet are buried in the sticky mud but she shows no signs of slowing down. Wading through the dirt, she reaches the edge of a paddy field and climbs the bund. Until two months ago, the lush green fields around her were barren stretches, lying fallow for decades. “The whole area was covered in weeds and there were no irrigation canals,” Usha says, pointing to the fields in front of her.
In June, a group of people approached Usha, 55, about cultivating paddy in the fallow lands near her home in Kadekar village in Udupi district of Karnataka. The group was part of the ‘Hadilu Bhoomi Krishi Andolana’, a paddy farming movement which is aiming to revive agriculture in Udupi and coax landowners like Usha into farming again.
The movement was started as an activity devised by Murali Kadekar, the headmaster of the Nittur High School in Udupi, to engage his students in agriculture in 2020. This year, Udupi’s BJP MLA Raghupathi Bhat took a keen interest in implementing the idea in other parts of the district and Murali Kadekar, now retired from his headmaster duties, worked with him. The plan, which began in February with the removal of weeds and cleaning of the barren fields, received support from ministers, journalists and even film personalities. In the last two months, the group has turned more than 1000 acres of fallow land into lush green paddy fields in and around Udupi.
Murali Kadekar (extreme left) devised the movement
Murali’s idea to engage his students in agriculture goes back many years. Early in his teaching career, he recalled cycling past paddy fields to his school but in the last two decades, numerous Udupi residents turned away from farming and took up other jobs even though rice was Udupi’s staple food and the region is known for its unique kaje (red) rice, a variety of boiled rice. “The costs of agriculture went higher and profit margins narrowed. Most families managed to educate their children and unlike in our days when we grew up with nature, the education system now tells the students to stay away from nature - “Don’t get wet in the rain, don’t let the fields muddy your shoes, sit in an AC room and don’t go outside” - the syllabus has very little about farming so the youngsters in our villages left for job opportunities in cities and the seniors stopped cultivating the fields,” Murali says.
Data provided by the Karnataka government in a cabinet note issued in 2020 backs up Murali’s observations. Revenue Minister R Ashoka said 6% of the state’s farmlands (11.79 lakh hectares) were left uncultivated. “The situation was similar in Udupi so we decided to list out all the problems in front of us,” says Murali.
A meeting was convened in February 2020 to discuss the project to cultivate paddy in fallow lands. It was attended mostly by Murali’s old students. “There were no drainage channels and there were wild plants that had grown in them. There was also plastic and glass waste that needed to be manually cleared,” says Murali.
Udupi MLA Raghupathi Bhat planting saplings in Harady village in July 2021
There was hesitation at the start - the enormity of the task was dawning on the group, some of whom had no prior experience with agriculture. “People thought we were aiming too high when we started discussing it. The hardest part is the beginning - preparing the land for paddy cultivation because many of the lands were left barren for over 10 years. It takes community effort to revive the fields,” says Murali Kadekar. Lands were identified in Karambally, Perampally, Kakkunje, Nittur, and Puttur in Udupi, mostly through his old students.
Murali and his students got to work and soon, drainage channels were dug up and the weeds and waste in the fields were removed mostly through laborious work done by their small group of volunteers. “We removed loads of plastic and made irrigation canals for the water to flow,” recalls Murali. The work was done by a small group of old students and enthusiasts led by Murali. “A lot of the work was done by the time the pandemic struck. We then returned to the fields in the monsoon for planting,” says Murali.
The rice was harvested four months later. “One of our students had a rice mill so the rice was processed there and we gave it a brand name - Nittur Suvarna (gold),” says Murali. 25 tonnes of rice, organic and non-polished, was then sold in 5, 10 and 15 kg bags in Udupi and to places like Mangaluru, Bengaluru and Mumbai. “We kept the excess rice in the Yakshagana Kalaranga where I work. People came asking for it and we sold off most of the rice we grew. We gave the landowners 10 kg of rice too,” says Murali.
More importantly, the idea had translated to on-ground work and it was showing results. Data from the Agriculture Department showed that the area under paddy cultivation in Udupi went up by 1020 hectares in 2020, a 2.93% increase on the previous year. “Few landowners saw the initiatives we were taking up and decided to cultivate paddy on their own,” says Murali.
Murali retired from his duties as headmaster in October 2020 and was free to take the idea implemented in and around Nittur to other places in Udupi. He found a willing supporter in Raghupathi Bhat, BJP MLA from Udupi and the Kedarautaana Trust which came forward to turn fallow land into paddy fields to grow rice on a larger scale.
The trust got to work from February itself this year to repeat the headmasters’ 2020 exercise on a much larger scale. “There were around 5000 acres of fallow land in Udupi last year. Many landowners, who were educated and lived in Mumbai and Bengaluru, did not even know where exactly their land was,” says Dr. Shankar M, from the Krishi Vigyan Kendra in Udupi. We aimed to turn 2000 acres of fallow land in and around Udupi into paddy fields. Barren fields in many villages were cleaned and drainage canals were constructed,” says Dr Shankar M of the Krishi Vignyan Kendra.
In the monsoon season in June and July, more than 30 ‘naati’ (planting) programmes were held in different places in Udupi with the MLA taking the lead in planting paddy saplings in fallow lands identified by the trust.
One of the lands identified was the one in Kadekar near Usha Shetty’s home. For Usha, who was born and raised in Kadekar village in Udupi, it was the first time in over a decade she saw her family land with paddy saplings planted in them.
She married a farmer Balraj Shetty in 1995 but over the next ten years, Balraj stopped farming on their modest 13 cents land near their home. “My father died in 2005 and by then, the elders had stopped farming in our village because it was hard work and it wouldn’t work out a profit for us,” Usha says. Balraj began working as an auto rickshaw driver to earn money.
Usha at her home in Kadekar, Udupi
Usha’s father Gopal Shetty left behind a total of 68 cents of land to be split between her and five other sisters. Apart from Usha, the other sisters are settled in Mumbai. “It was not possible for any of us to take up cultivation. There was a lot of work to be done in the field - there was no space for the water to flow and we didn't have the resources or the labourers to maintain the crops after they were planted,” says Usha.
In June this year, volunteers from the Kedarottana Trust readied the fields by digging up canals. This had an unexpected side effect as it eased the flow of water in the fields and helped Usha avoid a situation like last year when her house was flooded after heavy rains.
Usha pointing to the water level at her home during the recent rains
The volunteers have now readied fields and planted paddy saplings in over 1000 acres of land in Udupi including the plot near Usha’s home. But though the MLA is involved, the project is not government-related. “It is a social movement in Udupi to revive agriculture. We (the trust) may not make a profit this year but we have had students, ministers, priests, industrialists and journalists taking to agricultural fields and planting saplings,” says MLA Raghupathi Bhat referring to the various naati (planting) events held by the trust in the last two months.
The MLA has thrown himself into the challenge of preparing fallow lands for cultivation. “I have been part of dozens of road projects but working on something that used to be the main livelihood of the people of Udupi and is synonymous with the identity of this place makes me happy.”
He is now hopeful of a healthy harvest this year to earn back some of the money spent for the cultivation. “We ended up spending lakhs on preparing the fields.The plan is to harvest the rice and sell it as our own brand rice again. We have not promised anything to the landowners this year but we are looking at ways we can give back to the community,” Raghupathi Bhat says.
Even though machines were used to speed up processes, the process of cultivation was organic and no chemicals were used. The group also wanted to promote and conserve the local kaje (red) rice, a variety of boiled rice, eaten in the region. “Someone from Udupi will want to eat this rice even if they are in Mumbai, Bengaluru or abroad,” says Dr Shankar.
The idea, he says, is to continue the efforts and revive paddy cultivation in the district again. “We turned more than 1000 acres of fallow land this year into paddy fields. This is an important shift in the history of agriculture in this district. The most important thing is that this should be a movement that continues next year and helps more people revive their fallow lands and cultivate paddy organically,” he adds.