{
  "title": "From Bholi to 19AGRO: A Farming Journey That Keeps Evolving",
  "description": "The story of how one family’s work at Bholi grew through research, organic trials, permaculture and continuing field-led learning into 19AGRO.",
  "category": "Our Story",
  "readingMinutes": 3,
  "wordCount": 518,
  "topics": [
    "19AGRO story",
    "Dasot Organic Farms",
    "Bholi farm Rajasthan",
    "organic farming journey",
    "Vriksha Ayurveda"
  ],
  "url": "https://agro19-start-with-soil.dasotorganicfarms.chatgpt.site/articles/from-bholi-to-19agro-a-farming-journey-that-keeps-evolving.html",
  "content": [
    {
      "type": "paragraph",
      "text": "Our family's relationship with the land at Bholi Village in Bhilwara, Rajasthan, began in 1969, when Late Shri Sardarmal Ji Dasot decided to settle here. The farming journey that would eventually give shape to 19AGRO grew from those roots, through years of research, practical experiments, and a willingness to change direction when the land demanded it."
    },
    {
      "type": "heading",
      "text": "Research first, then a small piece of land"
    },
    {
      "type": "paragraph",
      "text": "We began our research in 2014. In 2016, we took up approximately 20,000 square feet to experiment with organic cultivation across different crops."
    },
    {
      "type": "paragraph",
      "text": "This was our space for trial and error. We were moving from reading and discussion to the daily responsibility of growing plants - trying approaches, observing their response, and learning from what succeeded and what did not."
    },
    {
      "type": "paragraph",
      "text": "That willingness to experiment has remained part of our work ever since."
    },
    {
      "type": "heading",
      "text": "Discovering permaculture"
    },
    {
      "type": "paragraph",
      "text": "In 2018, we were introduced to permaculture and began putting it into practice."
    },
    {
      "type": "paragraph",
      "text": "It broadened how we thought about the farm. Alongside individual crops, we began considering the relationships between soil, water, plants, animals, and the way the land was managed."
    },
    {
      "type": "paragraph",
      "text": "We saw encouraging results through 2021. But the conditions we were working with did not stay the same."
    },
    {
      "type": "paragraph",
      "text": "We began experiencing increasingly difficult weather patterns, while a shortage of fresh water made cultivation harder again. Approaches that had given us good results needed to be reconsidered. The next stage of our work grew out of that challenge."
    },
    {
      "type": "heading",
      "text": "A deeper focus on plant care"
    },
    {
      "type": "paragraph",
      "text": "In 2023, we began working with Vriksha Ayurveda."
    },
    {
      "type": "paragraph",
      "text": "For us, this was a response to the level of care our plants needed for successful cultivation under difficult conditions. It became another strand of our work, alongside the organic cultivation and permaculture practices we had already been developing."
    },
    {
      "type": "paragraph",
      "text": "Today, we are working with scientists, microbiologists, and wildlife biologists to develop a farming system guided by how natural systems function."
    },
    {
      "type": "paragraph",
      "text": "Our ambition is to understand those relationships more deeply and bring that understanding into everyday cultivation - from the life in the soil to plant nutrition and the wider farm environment."
    },
    {
      "type": "heading",
      "text": "What is changing on the farm"
    },
    {
      "type": "paragraph",
      "text": "One practical change we have observed is a significant reduction in our expenditure on fertilisers used for organic cultivation."
    },
    {
      "type": "paragraph",
      "text": "We are also developing Vriksha Ayurveda-based formulations for application through drip irrigation or foliar feeding. These are part of our continuing work on plant care, crop quality, and the composition of the produce we grow."
    },
    {
      "type": "paragraph",
      "text": "As this work develops, we want to document both the results and the conditions behind them: what was grown, what was applied, what it cost, and what we could measure."
    },
    {
      "type": "heading",
      "text": "What we hope to build"
    },
    {
      "type": "paragraph",
      "text": "Our ambition for Dasot Organic Farms and 19AGRO is to bring together knowledge, careful observation, and practical farming."
    },
    {
      "type": "paragraph",
      "text": "The journey has moved through several stages: research in 2014, cultivation trials in 2016, permaculture in 2018, and work with Vriksha Ayurveda from 2023. Each stage has given us something to build on, and new questions to investigate."
    },
    {
      "type": "paragraph",
      "text": "This journal will share that continuing process - the encouraging results, the difficulties, and the changes we make as we learn more about the land we work with."
    }
  ]
}