A concept I liked in Germany!!!

During my earlier visits to Germany most of the time I stayed in a city called Mannheim and never had a chance to experience the village side of Germany and more importantly on the farming side. The other reason was that all my past visits were during winter time and i couldn't see anything in the farm field.

This time I am lucky enough to get an opportunity to travel during summer and that too for a long duration.......... thanks to SAP ..
I stay in a village called Nussloch which is around 10KM from Heidelberg. The village is surrounded by lots of farm field and was impressed by the way farming is done here. Many times my parents and people at my village were asking how the farming is done in Germany? what they grow? how the farmers live? do they have animals in the farm field?.....many questions and this time I am happy that I have lots of information to share with them.
Now will come to an interesting concept, one day while talking to our house owner, I casually asked them where do they buy vegetables. He said, we don't buy the vegetables. I was surprised by this answer, then i asked do you eat meat all the time? He said, NO, we eat vegetables all the time but we grow them in our garden. I was again surprised and asked him are you a farmer? He said, I am not a farmer but have rented  small portion of land where in we grow the vegetables and fruits. This was very interesting for me and I visited their garden one day to see how it is and what they grow.I saw almost all the vegetables (Onions, carrot, cauliflower, tomato, beans, potato, sweet potato .......) and fruits (apples, cherry, grapes.....) in the garden. Due to long winter season they only grow these vegetables during summer, these vegetables are stored in a cold storage and consumed for rest of the year. Amazing right? You can see some pictures below taken at their garden.

 

A small garden of my house owner

Just to outline how the concept works:

• Govt has created has mad small plots at the outskirts of the village
• People can approach the government and rent the plot.
• One need to pay some yearly subscription fees for it

I feel this is an interesting concept and would make sense if implemented in India as well. Especially this could be useful for the middle class retired people where in they get very less pension but vegetable prices are increasing every year. Also its kind of a time pass for them and they keep themselves busy doing some work in their garden.
If you as well find it interesting and if you can influence the government/government officials on this concept, kindly go ahead and explain them the concept!!!!

Sometimes the decisions made with right intention take us to worst situation!!

We have come across many people who have gone bankrupt though they had made some decisions with right intention. I had seen one such family in my native who are our close friends. It’s a joint family of 7 members with 3 sons and 2 daughter. Both the daughters were already married. The head of the family is a close friend of my dad.

They were a very happy family until 1993, during this time they made a decision to lay the pipe line from Krishna river to their field. If I am right, they didn't have any money at hand and decided to take money from local lenders at village instead of going for bank loan which they thought could delay their project. They were so eager to get the pipe line done as early as possible so that they can start growing sugar cane. But we should note that the local lenders usually charge more interest, I feel this was their first mistake but it was the only option for them to complete the project in time.

The project was completed just in a month time and they decided to grow sugarcane. They had a plan in place to repay the loan amount in one year after they sell the crop. But unfortunately they didn't estimate the amount they had to invest to grow the crop in next one year. Sugar cane crop usually gives the yield in 10-12 months time frame and after that you can cut it and send it to make jaggery or sugar . During this one year time frame they borrowed some more money to manage the additional farming expenses, worked very hard for the whole year and they managed produce very good jaggery.

It was a happy time for them as the yield was best during that time compared to other farmers. But the time was so bad and suddenly the jaggery rate went down. There is a conception that the jaggery rate goes up during Navratri/Dipavali time due to high demand. They decided not to sell immediately and instead wait until the festival season starts. This added some 3 months of wait time to get the returns and on the other side the interest was going up.

They finally sold the jaggery after 3 months but there was only a marginal increase in the rates and they couldn't get the expected money from their first year crop. It happened that they could only managed to pay half of the interest amount accrued and the remaining interest got added to principal amount and next year interest cycle started. Mean time they borrowed some more money to manage the additional farming expenses and to support their elder son education.

This continued for almost four years and they never even got to the situation at least to repay complete interest amount year on year. The confidence of the family touched its nadir and they lost the hopes of repaying the loan amount. At the end they took a decision of selling their property and repaying the loan amount. In a bid to close their loan, they sold 10-12 acres of land and I think they left with another 3-4 acres of land that was not good for farming.

The family was so hard working, they did most of the farm work on their own and none in the family had any bad habit. But it was just unfortunate that one decision they made with a good intention got them to a worst situation of their life!!!!