Techie with green thumb reaps a soil-less harvest

GURGAON: A grim reply from experts, on the future of protected cultivation at a farming conference in Karnal, sent Amit Kumar Soni on a search for answers to this global issue, all on his own.
The 31-year-old engineering graduate turned his search into an innovative solution for cultivation by using coco peat (coconut husks) instead of soil, sowing a seed in a peat-filled plastic grow bag and irrigating them using a water-dripper system in a controlled climate.
Without soil, natural nutrients that plants feed on, are provided artificially by liquid fertilizers through drip irrigation. Moreover, plants are not exposed to soil-borne diseases, and have a high rate of survival. The drip irrigation provides macro nutrients - NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium) and micro nutrients - copper, zinc, iron, calcium, magnesium, etc, for the plant's growth. Coco peat does the job of root holding.
"Government is pumping huge money into protected cultivation (poly-house/greenhouse farming), but most are shutting down. I did some research and realized the only way to make them economically viable is to avoid using soil," said Soni.
After returning from the conference in Karnal in February last year, Soni took an acre of land on lease, bought seeds, 12,500 grow bags and coco peat to experiment the feasibility of soil-less farming in Haryana in July. A dozen visits to the horticulture office and hundreds of meetings with farmers in the state, he was deflated. Soil-less cultivation, he felt, was a non-starter in the state.
"What I was experimenting with was risky, because I didn't know if it would be successful," he said. Soni's biggest challenge was to get training in protected cultivation, but no government agency was ready to give him that, as he was not a farmer. His second hurdle was money; Soni had already used up his 10 years' savings of Rs 6 lakh.
"I told people I had leased an acre of land, but no one was convinced enough to train me. Finally, I relied on my own knowledge, read some books on farming and explored sources on the internet before I sowed seeds this July. My engineering background came handy," said Soni.
Eventually, of the 12,500 cucumber plants, only six rotted. Last month, he harvested. "As no soil was used, I didn't need any pesticide or fungicide, but used only water-soluble fertilizers. I sold my entire produce to a popular multi-national grocery chain for Rs 7 lakh while my input cost was Rs 6 lakh," he said with a sense of pride.
After having a successful run with cucumbers, Amit is ready to replicate the model with other flowers and vegetables. He has already invested Rs 1.21 lakh in seeds of petunia, pansy, eggplant, capsicum (green and red) and tomato, for his next crop.
"There are several flowers, like petunia and pansy, which were earlier not grown in hot states such as MP, UP, Haryana and Bihar, as the climate is unsuitable. I'm the first to grow them here, near Manesar, under controlled climatic conditions and without soil," he said.
Amit has already gifted some petunia plants in soil-less grow bags. "An official in the horticulture department of Rashtrapati Bhavan has requested for 200 petunias for the Mughal Gardens," he says.
Appreciating the initiative, Mange Ram Godara, district horticulture officer and an agricultural scientist, said, "I have never seen this kind of farming (soil-less) in this state. It is likely to be the future of poly-houses. In normal course of protected cultivation, soil loses nutrients as well as micro-organisms, because it doesn't get exposed to rain. But if you grow a crop without soil, there's no possibility of damage to crop from disease or fungus
."