Looking at the agriculture in the village of Rathankot it has to be considered as subsistence agriculture. People do grow crops for their daily life and consumption:
surplusses only are sold.
The conditions in which they cultivate their crops are harsh due to the geographical situation; steep hill or valley slopes which do not allow mechanical cultivation, difficult access to the fields, intensive labour requirements for transportation of goods to and from the fields. The only way cultivation can be organised is through manual labour and the assistance of their oxes for plowing.
The climate is favourable to many crops and they have 3 crops per annum. The soil seems pretty fertile, clay like though with local drainage problems. They grow rice and maize during the wet season. It is remarkble to see how every square (centi)meter is exploited. All rice fields are bordered by soya plants. In between the maize plants one finds the millet plants which will develop to maturity once the corn plants are harvested. Furthermore they grow wheat, mustard and oil rape seed during the rest of the year.
In their gardens next to their homes they grow a big variety of vegetables and fruit trees. Almost every family has a garden.
Vegetables range from potatoes to peppers, tomatoes, beans,leaf vegetables,sweet potatoes, ginger, onions, garlic, corn, carrots, herbs and much more.
At the same time one can find a hughe collection of fruit trees ranging from pears, goba, oranges, kumquat, banana, grenate apple, grapefruit(like)trees,vines, tea, coffee and others.
One can really speak about organic farming as no pesticides are known or used here.
Around each house you find chicken with their chicks. At night they are kept indoors (in the living part of the house)in order to protect them from wild animals during the night. Two years ago they had a tiger dwelling around in the wood nearby. An inspiring idea if you have to visit the outside toilet during the night without any light (or toilet paper). Besides they have also leopards of which the old ones prefer human meat according to some guidebooks. This may be the reason why one find so many dogs around the village.
Additionally one finds several goats and between two and five buffalos. Having these is very labourious for older people as they need to get feed for them from the fields twice a day. All feed has to be cut by hand and carried in typical bamboo baskets back home.
In this village there were no pigs as they are considered to be too dirty to be kept near the house. On the way to the village we noticed some however alongside the road.
Most houses in the village do have cavities in their walls in order to house honeybees. This system is probably thousands of years old and does not allow any handling. Beekeepers are waiting until bees come to install their colony in the cavity. The entrances are holes shaped by cow dung. The cavity inside the house is closed with a stone and fresh cow dung.
Furthermore, villagers do have problems with apes and wild boars feeding on their corn crops.
Despite the fact that nature grows everything you could wish here, it seems it does not come served on a silver plate.
You can see some pictures from the village in this web album!
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