I own a farm in India. Indian people are moved by plight of poor farmers, which helps government subsidizes most of the inputs we require in farming. As most farms in India have pretty weak technology and automation, we are able to leverage subsidized inputs along with modern technology and produce yeilds as high as 20x the average yield.
Labor is cheap in India and it's easily found specially when we pay more for slightly more safer and comfortable work.
Supporting farmers is a sentimental thing for people in India so we are able to produce very large profits to the tune of several millions yearly in profit.
Previously I was a software engineer for a western company based in India it was very stressful job as you need to be available for Oncall troubleshooting anytime.
If you don't mind, what do you produce on your farm and how many do you hire. It seems like you would need a high output yield to generate millions or have a pretty large farm. Also how do you sell your produce/product? Direct to consumers? Through retail?
Also curious to know how you came to doing this. Did you see it as an opportunity or just went into it through family
Not OP, but we have a farm in India. Mostly we let it remain stagnant for a few years, so it's just been giving us coconuts.
Now we are starting an integrated fish farm + jackfruit farm + subsistence farm + livestock (goats only) approach. We have the fish farm because there's a nice irrigation stream that passes right by the side, wholly part of the farm (most farms of a certain land size will have some irrigation arrangement of the sort). The jackfruit is grown to sort of cater to the export demand for jackfruit abroad (especially with the whole "jackfruit as a meat trend"). Jackfruit trees grow thickly, so they provide a nice shade for any agriculture under the canopy at a reduced temperature (for stuff like spinach, tomatoes, pumpkins, etc) but that's mostly subsistence scale unless you go inorganic. Jackfruit leaves are really good as a feed for goats, which are the only animals that eat them and actually love eating them. The goats are sold for mutton to caterers for weddings and other functions.
Government gives electricity on the cheap as long as you show proof of agriculture (you cannot use it for your homes - they connect it separately and check it very often). The only issues have been theft of fish, for which we fit a bunch of security cameras around the place, so we were able to nab a couple of bastards. The main issue has been the semi-manual irrigation system, but I tested a prototype irrigation system using a Raspberry Pi for our small garden here, so I might try something similar for the farm back home.
Thanks for that. Gives a lot more perspective. Is it usually high maintenance to maintain the farm i.e. do you have people taking care of it - how hands on do you have to be for that.
I would expect GP to be a lot more involved and not less as the post title suggests but I was curious.
Labour costs are usually suppressed because it's India. The erstwhile norm was to rely on unionized laborers for work, but migrants from the destitute states up north started coming en masse, which suppressed labor costs even further. As long as you give them a roof over their (families') head, 3 meals a day and a living wage to send back home to their village, they work reliably, especially when you need the manpower to guard against thieves or harvest season. Nobody I know uses heavy harvesting machinery except for cereals and some commodity vegetables - tech is mostly used for plant and livestock monitoring.
Labor is cheap in India and it's easily found specially when we pay more for slightly more safer and comfortable work.
Supporting farmers is a sentimental thing for people in India so we are able to produce very large profits to the tune of several millions yearly in profit.
Previously I was a software engineer for a western company based in India it was very stressful job as you need to be available for Oncall troubleshooting anytime.