A lifelong love for farming… Durjodhan Seokaran is a ‘Special Person’

Mar 01, 2015 News

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“I love farming. I love to be every day in my farm. The farm is so healthy and it draws me closer to nature’s beauty—every day you go there, you see changes.”

 

By Leon Suseran

At age 62, Durjodhan Seokaran is one of the oldest farmers along the East Bank of Berbice corridor. East Bank Berbice, particularly, Mara and such areas were opened up by the People’s National Congress (PNC) Administration in the 1970s around the same period with other farming areas and schemes such as Black Bush Polder on the Corentyne.

It was during that period when Seokaran and his parents moved from Mahaicony and occupied lands in Mara, to develop and build the scheme; tilled and planted on the lands and developed what would be in decades to come, large-scale farming, providing the markets with tons of produce in the form of cash-crops, ground provisions and citrus.

Seokaran became engaged in farming at the tender age of 13—an age when most children would have just started high school. In fact, he dropped out of school to take up the activity, and never looked back. Instead, from then to now (and perhaps for many, many more years to come), his eyes have been transfixed on his fields and lands for planting.

He is an experienced farmer who has given 49 years to farming and developing lands for planting. The results are there to see; massive fields of crops; as well as uniquely-shaped and sized provisions as well.

“Farming is not work, it is something I love dearly.” Spending time in his many gardens is all the satisfaction he needs in his life. It’s all the recreation and relaxation he would ever need. We all would certainly love what we do, if we possess the attitude and approach Seokaran adopts to farming.

EARLY DAYS

He related that he watched his parents, Seokaran Balkarran and Sumintra, farm the land back in Mahaicony, his place of birth, and he learned lots of skills. They planted rice and ground provisions at Mahaicony. Subsequently, they applied for housing schemes at Mara and Black Bush Polder, and were successful by being granted lots at Mara, and later migrated to live there.

Young Durjhodan attended the Schepmoed Primary School at Mara, and recalled having lots of good times as a child, along with his eight siblings. He remembered mixing with the village folk, comprising persons from other parts of the country as well. It was a new mix of people living in a newly-established farm housing scheme. “The community was always so nice—there was a mixture of people, and we all lived as one…you didn’t have race problems at that time—the Indians and Africans lived lovingly together, and up to this day.”

He enjoyed playing cricket in the school field on weekends as well as tending to his father’s cattle in the backdam. “We had lots of activities, like catching fishes and bathing in the nice canals—there was the Conservancy, two miles into the back dam and there was nice, fresh black water there…we had a rollicking time.”

Dropping out of school, he desired to learn a trade or two while tending to the cattle and the farm lands. Seokaran was only thirteen. It was a lot of back- breaking work, as he related, and much of it had to be done manually. He was allocated a piece of land from the family where he farmed and even sold the produce. The money garnered was enough for him to move back to Novar, Mahaicony, where he spent about eight months, learning to tailor. He was seventeen. During his training period as a tailor, his mentor, who was a tailor in the village, paid him a stipend, which he saved. “He gave me a ‘small piece’ for encouragement,” he said.

BUILDING A FAMILY

Returning to Mara, he practiced that trade and soon got married at age twenty to Sursattie of La Bonne Intention (LBI).  They share four children:  Shiwchand, Nadira, Bhena, and Besham.

Seokaran said that it was his desire to build a family of his own, but he needed a steady source of income, and jobs were hard to find, since the scheme was not so heavily- populated. “I practiced the tailoring and still planted my kitchen garden and farmed, too,” he said. “That is when I started to expand and managed to get by to build a future family,” he noted.

The area, in which he invested, expanded and developed over the years, and so did the variety of crops he planted. Farming became his main source of income, as he took over the activity from his parents, who both went into retirement. Pumpkins, cassava, sweet peppers, sweet potatoes, were among the crops he planted. A few years later, he gave up tailoring to devote more time to the farming business, which was expanding rapidly, so much so that he had to enlist the labour of a few men.

“I LOVE FARMING”

“I love farming. I love to be every day in my farm. The farm is so healthy and it draws me closer to nature’s beauty—every day you go there, you see changes.” he related.

Sometimes he toils up to the late hours there. “You don’t want to leave the farm…sometimes I leave the farm at dusk, because you can perform more in the evening hours.”

In those hours, he said, he can better observe the crops, since they wilt during the heat of the day, “but everything becomes fresh and bright around three-thirty to four o’clock in the afternoons—then the farm looks more flourishing.”

Seokaran’s expansion over the years has been grdual.

“You programme yourself to do stage by stage farming, because you never want to run out of produce,” he said while reflecting on the fluctuating prices for fruits and vegetables on the markets today. The prudent farmer said that he always prepares new lands, so that he can never be out of crops, “and then the good times for you is when the prices go up— you make more money.”

Farming has become a family activity over the years for the Seokarans, as his sons and wife work hard in the farm to make things better. He has delved into farming more permanent crops such as citrus over the past decades. “I still do my cash crops—I plant a lot of cabbage, cassava, sweet potatoes, legumes like bora and peas, lettuce, celery and so on.”

Seokaran’s farm is well-known across Berbice; so much so that teachers regularly take their students on tours to his facilities. More recently, he assisted CXC students of the Berbice High School by giving them on-site demonstrations on land preparation and farming.

“I showed them the practical work,” he noted. He then observed as the students carried out his instructions, “and I showed them how to prepare the soil, and make a mound— for example, you cannot plant orange plants on a flat surface.”

A LIFE IN FARMING

Today, his work has expanded to over fifteen acres of both citrus and cash-crops under cultivation. Not too far from his homestead, Seokaran ventured into another piece of land and has been farming plantains, “and I have very good returns.” In 2008, he suffered a major blow when most of his plantains became infected with the disease, ‘Black Sigatoka’, “and that shook me up, so I cut down on the plantain project and developed the citrus more.”

Otherwise, Seokaran always experiences a bountiful harvest, mainly due to the long hours and efforts he and his family put into the business. Land preparation, he explained, is a very important aspect of farming, as well as treating the soil. “We treat the soil before we plant and do some fertilizing, too, before we plant our potatoes.”

“I really love to do farming, and I cannot stop farming unless I fall very sick,” he noted. “I wouldn’t leave farming for nothing!” he said.

Age is no barrier, as he boasts that he often outperforms and matches the work his younger labourers do on the farm.

“I work just like a young person…and I always want to be all day in the farm,” he said. While he endured much laborious and back-breaking work such as weeding back in the day, today he says farming has evolved into an activity that utilizes tools and machines. “There are land-tillers and brush-cutters,” he said, “so it has eased me a lot to get some small equipment to do my work.”

He has literally reaped the benefits from farming over the years. Other than providing physical and mental recreation for him, farming has provided a good source of income for the family, with his children being primary beneficiaries in terms of their education.

OUTSIDE SUPPORT

Over the years, Mara and other far-flung East Bank Berbice villages have suffered immensely from internal migration, as persons have ventured out to the Coast for a better standard of living, and to where more facilities are available. But not Seokaran, who has a house and land at Edinburgh which he refuses to occupy. “I am not going there; I just hold the lot— and because Mara is going to elevate more in the future, I will stay here.”

And he is well-supported by the relevant authorities. Only last week, a Canadian team from Caribbean Hunger Foundation visited the East Bank Berbice area to give assistance to farmers. “They gave us some fertilizers to boost plantain production. Over $80,000 in fertilizers was handed over last year to farmers,” he said.

Additionally, teams from Caribbean Local Economic Project (Cariled) regularly visit to establish a network of communication with the farmers. The farmers in the area only recently benefitted from the donation of an excavator by the team. “They went to visit our farms to see what we are doing,” he noted. Seokaran said that the teams promise more help based on the progress that they (the teams) see.

His contributions to the field of agriculture have not gone unnoticed. The Rotary Club in New Amsterdam recently presented him with a plaque of honour. Additionally, Seokaran won third place (from among hundreds of farmers), in the Ministry of Agriculture’s Farmers’ Day Seminar a few years ago. “I feel great about it—out of hundreds of farmers; I achieved a third prize and I thank them a lot for giving me a little token.”

As early as 05:30 hrs, he says, his farm, “calls him”, as he spends much of the morning doing work, after which he retires home for mid-morning breakfast. He returns later to the farm to do more work, and spends much of the day there. “I don’t have any idle time—my idle time is when I come out to New Amsterdam to buy agricultural stuff or to attend religious functions.”

Our ‘Special Person’ would regularly post pictures on his Facebook page, boasting of his yields and oversized provisions such as sweet potatoes and cassava, and even extended a warm welcome to anyone desirous of visiting his farm, to see the many “surprises” under cultivation.

A proud farmer indeed, deserving of ‘Special Person’ status this week and always.

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