Agriculture

Enabavi became one of the first villages in Telangana, apart from Punukula in the Khammam district, to turn fully organic, entirely giving up the use of chemical pesticides, fertilisers, and genetically modified crops.

People on the world's largest riverine island have cooked up a nutritious, economical and eco-friendly way of solving pest problems on their farm land — eating the pest before it eats their crop!

Thanks to her passion to imbibe the best practices based on climate, resources, location, and topography, the land that once lay dry and sandy with no earthworms, bees, and butterflies is now rich and fertile.

“The seed to dedicate ourselves for a cause larger than us was always there. The Chennai floods just acted as a catalyst, showing us the real misery of people and farmers residing in remote parts of the State, where facilities and help hardly reaches."

With help from bees, monkeys, earthworms, birds and snakes, read how 44-year-old Sandeep Saxena converted an absolute rocky and barren land into a thriving 'Food Forest' within a span of four years

A resident of Kalyangiri, Hashmath Fathima started gardening seriously when she moved to her current house in Mysuru about 26 years ago.

Each has its own backyard, where we cultivate our food. From vegetables like lady’s finger, baby tomato, ivy gourd, tomato, cluster beans, brinjal cowpea, green chilli to leafy greens, herbs, and fruits, we grow it all.

Solutions like rainwater harvesting, agroforestry and recharge wells that root on sustainability are already helping farmers sustain throughout the year.

From native varieties of brinjal that yield 24 kg on a single plant, to a rich diversity of tomatoes, chilli, black carrot, multi-coloured corn, sorghum, sunflower, pomegranate, wood apple, wheat and even millet, over 800 heirloom varieties are preserved in their unique Seed Bank since 18 years.

In their early thirties, Binu and Benny wanted to cultivate something that their farmer parents had never tried, and they wanted to do it on a large scale.