Three years of cycling to office

I completed three years of cycling to office. What does this mean to me?

"I can take a good decision and I can consistently follow it."

Three years back I used to read messages of pollution,  global warming, traffic problems etc.,  and share it with friends. What happens after that? Mostly we discuss that topic for 1 hour and blame someone in the world. I felt shame about myself.  I'm an well educated, but still not ready to take any responsibility. I always used to talk about every problem in our country and finally blame someone else(mostly government). So I decided to take the problem of pollution as my own. 'Bi-cycle' looked like a best solution. Then again I have problems of my own. I can start it, but the question is,  can I maintain it in the long run? 20 kms every day looking very big. Unless I do it for long term I can't get the results what I expected. This question chased me for quite some time, but still I decided to start it with a condition. "At least one day a week, I should do cycling to office."

That decision is inspired from an article which I read in childhood. The prime minister of Japan or Korea (don't remember exactly), identified the  health and traffic problems of using  cars. To convey the message to his country, every Wednesday he was cycling to his office. I really felt very proud of him. 

After the decision, opposition came from my family. For them vehicle is a status symbol. Since I'm earning money, they wanted me to buy a car. Cycle is a poor man's vehicle. It was very difficult to convince them. Since I was not ready to take back step, they left the discussion. It was very strange that, even my friends who are well educated also didn't understand my motto. Some people even laughed at me. The above said prime minister came to my mind again. In front of him, I'm a very small person. I don't need to worry about status at all. 

After I bought the cycle and did the cycling on very first day, it was a proud feeling and 20 kms looked very small. After that I dumped my decision of 'Cycle one day in a week'. I started to cycle every day and even today, Cycle is my first priority to office.

Now I can happily say to myself that:
"I'm not a guy who just talk about problems, I try to solve them".

Risk free agriculture

How many farmers in India really wish to see their children doing agriculture?

Not so many. Many farmers wish their son to get good education in cities and find a good job in city. But why we forget that food is our basic necessity and we all mostly work for food more than anything?

Farmers have their own story:

1.  Agriculture has lot of constraints at various levels. For example you can't plant when it is raining. You shouldn't get heavy rains after planting or at the time of harvesting. Whether there is a proper rainfall or not, the ground & crop should be watered properly based on the crop you are growing. 
2. When you want to buy food it is always costly. When farmer wants to sell the crop he always get the least price. You never get the deserved value for your effort.
3. Apart from the above, 'natural calamities' are always there to hurt you. Farmer is the first one to suffer for nature's outrage.

we have to agree that, this is the current scenario of farmer in India. Instead of blaming anyone for all those issues I thought of finding solutions and implement them. I categorized issues first.

1. Finding the right crop in right season at right time
2. Rains & Water
3. Electricity
4. Protecting the crop from pests
5. Marketing the crop

Finding the right crop in right season at right time:
 The very common mistake we hear about farmers is, "Every farmer will grow the same crop at same time and they don't see any demand in market by the time they want to sell". Farmers should have the knowledge of market and must understand the "Demand and Supply" theory. Farmers should be ready to try variety of crops to yield better profits.

Rains & Water:
We all know the value of water but we hardly make any effort to harvest rain water and maintain ground water level. Whatever the cost it takes we have to implement it as it is the proven solution.
When water is going to be the major concern all over the world, the farmers who depends on water more than anyone else should learn "How to use water effectively". The techniques like "Drip irrigation" should be implemented at any cost.

If the land is situated in a location where weather plays spoil sport every year like "heavy rains", "no rains", "heavy winds" etc.,. then "Poly housing" should be considered as a solution where temperature, humidity will be controlled artificially.

Electricity:
All Indian villages will get only 6-8 hours of power in a day. That can be day or night, nobody guarantees that. It is very inconvenient for every farmer but still everyone depends on the government. We all know that if we depend on government, this problem can't be solved in our lifetime.
Farmers should start using solar or wind power. Even though they are the costly solutions, we get the permanent solution for electricity. In the case of small farmers who cannot afford them should form a group and should implement this.

Protecting the crop from pests:
Pests are clearly the enemies of farmers. But how you destroy the pests plays a major part in the quality of crop you gonna get. Chemical pest control methods are so easy and used by many people, which is going to kill pests quickly and can affect human also. Natural pest control methods are little expensive but safe and improve the food you gonna have. There was an episode about "pesticides" in tv show "Satyameva Jayate" was an eye opener.

Marketing the crop:
As everyone says "Last but not least", How/Where/When you sell your crop is very important to earn good profits. The common scenario is, by the time you get crop into your hands, merchants will temporarily reduce the price of the crop in the market so that they can buy it in cheap and earn more profits.
Farmers should preserve the crop and sell at the time when there is a good market. Farmers should have enough exposure of various markets where they can get more worth for their crop.

It is easy to argue that small farmers cannot implement any of them. Hence we can't change the current scenario. Farmer need to put a step ahead to have a better life. All the above mentioned techniques are planned for long term and will definitely make the life easy for a farmer. The PLANNING will inversely reduce the RISK.

I welcome all the readers to share their opinions and arguments as discussion is going to give a better idea for everyone.

Note: I'm not a experienced farmer who used all these techniques. But I'm the one who is interested in agriculture and going to put the step ahead.

Thanks to experts who shared their knowledge and experiences with me, which helped me to take right decision.