One Straw Approach to Farming

At One Straw Naturals, we develop and manage market gardens to produce natural food in Eco-friendly, integrated farm environments using completely natural inputs. We grow vegetables, fruits and fodder, and we grow chickens, goats, cows and fish, with each element of the farm feeding the other elements. We offer a weekly vegetable basket subscription service, and sell eggs and meats on order. Our first farm is called Vennela Organic Farm, a 10-acre patch near Hyderabad city in India, which we jointly own with our friends.

Our goal is to minimize external inputs so that the farm becomes fully sustainable from ecological and financial standpoints. We believe the secret to sustainability lies in the quality of the soil, and that in turn depends on the microbial life in the soil. To increase the diversity and quantity of microbial life, we employ a number of strategies:

1. We make our own fertilisers and pesticides, always from natural substances, for example, cow dung, urine, cinnamon, garlic, ginger, leaves from a wide variety of local flora.
2. We ferment a lot of things, following Korean Natural Farming methods to make Oriental Herbal Nutrients (OHN), Fermented Plant Juices, Lacto-bacillus bacteria, etc.; and Indian techniques such as Subhash Palekar Natural Farming (SPNF) methods to make Jeevamrutham, Neemastram, Dasaparni Kashayam etc.
3. We bring in microbes from forests and fertile lands and cultivate them on our farm by making Indigenous Microorganisms (IMO) using Korean Natural Farming practices.
4. We leverage the by-products of our animals to increase soil organic matter and promote growth of microbial life.
5. We feed fermented inputs and IMO mentioned above to our animals as well, promoting gut bacteria levels to build immunity levels.

And we recycle a lot. It is truly amazing how much recycling can happen on a farm. Waste from butchery feeds chickens, chicken waste feeds plants and fish, fish waste feeds plants, plant waste feeds soil, chickens and other plants and so on. We believe these recycling processes, combined with soil organic matter and fertilising inputs mentioned above will gradually help create micro-environments that are favorable to microbial life, which in turn aerate the soil, retain moisture & nutrients and provide the plants with just the nutrients they need, when they need them, and in the perfect plant-available forms.

While we are doing a good job with the various inputs and recycling, we have not been great with mulching, which is badly needed for helping shield microbes from the intense Telangana heat, wind and rains. We want to ideally cover all the beds with thick layers of mulch, but haven’t been able to find cost-effective ways to find sufficient quantities of organic matter locally. We see this as a very important element of natural farming, and will be focusing on it over the next few years.

We have a long way to go before becoming fully sustainable, but the journey is fascinating, humbling and is also the need of the hour. We are constantly learning and are keenly interested in collaborating with like-minded folks around the world and learn together, and do our tiny bit in making the planet a better place to live for generations to come. Please feel free to comment and share your ideas, thoughts, suggestions and love!