To begin with, homesteading is a way of life that matches well with sustainable living. The need for food, water, and shelter make people depend on the earth’s resources. However, sustainable living means using fewer resources and reducing the impact on the community, land, and world. Despite these complexities, it does not require a big lifestyle change. Small and subtle changes can also help.
Furthermore, homesteading is popular in some parts of India, where people grow their own food and live close to nature. You rarely find these homesteads in urban areas, obviously so. Urban areas really do have just too many people and too little land. Ultimately, what homesteading asks of you is a certain amount of an open mind and willingness to explore.
What is a Homestead?
Over a long period of time, homestead farming or home gardening has evolved in many tropical countries. This historical tradition is generally understood to be a system for the production of subsistence crops for the cultivator and his/her family. These practices have numerous terms, such as mixed garden horticulture, home gardening, Javanese home gardening, compound farming, mixed or house gardening, kitchen gardening, household gardening, and homestead agroforestry. To conserve the natural resource base, protect the environment, and enhance the prosperity of a family or household over a period of time, sustainable agriculture is the goal. This system of farming basically helps to achieve this goal. Furthermore, it conserves biodiversity and improves household nutritional security and production. It is worth noting that the United Nations General Assembly recognised the importance of this system, and declared 2014 as the International Year of Family Farming.
Why Should You Go for a Homestead?
Farmers who seek to increase productivity end up choosing homestead farming as an option more often than not. Basically, these are the requirements of sustainability that homestead farming satisfies: It is productive, ecologically sound, stable, economically viable, and socially acceptable.
Increasing Productivity
Home gardens are resource islands that provide a wide variety of goods for domestic consumption. This is the fact that makes homestead farming productive. Food, beverages, construction materials, firewood, and other household supplies are some of the goods. What’s more, the system can produce crops or pasture in the presence of trees. It can also produce from the trees themselves. Furthermore, the home garden’s different crop or tree species satisfy the farmer’s myriad needs. The household’s diet gets a substantial proportion of energy and nutritional requirements from the production from trees. A characteristic of food production in home gardens is the continual supply of edible food. It results from the combination of crops with different production cycles.
Non‑food plants are also found in home gardens. They are of considerable importance for many purposes. Fuel, fodder, timber, medicine, fibre, latex, ornamental and religious purposes, and items of commercial value (such as dyes, paints, perfumes, handicrafts, matchsticks, etc.) are some of them. The livestock component supports the farmer in many ways. It provides financial support at times of distress. It also provides draught power, milk, meat, and organic manure.
Eco-Friendly
A symbiotic manner of coexistence between plants, animals, and man is what home gardens comprise. This is a system that is an essential component of ecological security. Ecological sustainability has biodiversity as one of the main indicators. The home garden system has very high species diversity and complex structural arrangement of components with strong ecological foundations. It simulates the structure and function of a natural tropical forest ecosystem. The species diversity of home gardens also helps to manage pests and diseases. Going for a tractor with a low carbon footprint would be ideal too, such as the Mahindra 575 DI XP PLUS.
A system must maintain equilibrium between the input and output of natural resources to be ecologically sustainable. This prevents soil exhaustion. Studies in homesteads show the loss of nutrients from the system through biomass harvesting by adding nutrients from various sources (litter fall, stem flow, organic manure, and fertilizer). Nutrient cycling processes become particularly relevant in homesteads because of the effect of trees on such processes. However, these processes take place to varying degrees in all land‑use systems.
How Do You Start?
Say, you like doing things on your own, relying and depending only on yourself. A homestead would be the perfect idea for you! Setting up a homestead involves forethought, creativity, and hard labour. Let’s get you started:
- Locate suitable land that suits your requirements and budget. Take into account the climate, soil, water, and zoning requirements.
- Design your homestead plan based on your objectives and available resources.
- Use organic methods and permaculture concepts to grow your food. Plant a range of appropriate crops and trees for your climate and soil.
- Raise animals for meat, eggs, milk, wool and other items. Choose breeds that are well-suited to your surroundings and handle them with care.
- Use canning, drying, freezing, or fermenting to preserve and store your harvest. Produce your dairy: cheese, yoghurt. More so, you can also make your bread, wine, and other items.
- Reduce-Reuse-Recycle, the 3Rs of Sustainability. Compost your organic waste and fertilise your land with it.
- Invest in farm equipment and tractors. Investing in a Mahindra 475 DI XP PLUS would mean you can basically stop depending on outside farms for your yield.
Conclusion
Sustainable farming is what homestead farming ensures. It uses natural resources for the benefit of present and future generations. Kerala has great opportunities for such farming. This region has enormous cultural and biological riches. Development initiatives should aim at diversification that integrates human dwellings, microclimate, annual and perennial plants, animals, soils, and water into stable, productive communities.
The relationships created among them by placing them in the homestead are the focus. It should not be on these components themselves. The components should be integrated so that overall biological efficiency is improved, biodiversity is preserved, and productivity is self-sustaining. The ultimate goal must be this. Policy initiatives and land reforms are needed to protect the integrity of the existing homesteads.
