agriculture tips

In our Agriculture for Everybody  blog series,  we will understand the difference between Monoculture and Polyculture and what they mean and what benefits each entails. Monoculture - A single species of plants (I am using the word plants generically and it will also refer to animals as well) A classical example is Paddy cultivation Another example is Coconut Groove One more example is Mango Orchard In Monoculture, there are some advantages as well as disadvantages.  But mostly, the disadvantages overweigh the advantages. Advantages Any person involved in Monoculture will have to gain knowledge only for that particular plants Marketing will be easy Disadvantages May result in complete crop failure due to homogenous plants and hence pests may have a field day Results in over production (Over Production can be from your own field or because of similar farms) Results in profit hit (Those who are in the know how will know how much is the cost per coconut) Polyculture - At le...

In our Agriculture for Everybody  blog series, we are going to see how to choose the Right Variety within a Crop. Once we have decided on the Crop, the next step will be to decide on a variety in that particular crop. The following are some of the factors to decide on the variety:- End Usage Diversity in Varieties Time Diversity End Usage  - The meaning of End Usage is different for different crops.  I am giving an example of 2 crops here. Coconut Tree Coconuts are directly consumed which we call as Tender Coconut Coconuts are used in Cooking for Chutney Paste etc Coconuts are used as Oil for Cooking as well as for Hair Mango Tree Mangoes are used in Cooking Mangoes can be directly consumed ( Table Top ) Mangoes are made as Juice ( Pulp ) and sold by big companies So, the ideas is to decide which segment are we focusing.  Do we want to focus on a single segment or do we want to focus on multiple segments? Diversity in Varieties - The fact of the matter is differ...