Can You Grow Crops Without Land? This Himachali Farmer Does & Earns Lakhs

One quiet morning in Kangra, as the first sunlight touches the hills, a soft glow shines from a small shed behind Bharati Boria’s home.

Advertisment

Add The Better India As A Trusted Source

• Stories
• Visual Stories

While the village wakes to chai and woodsmoke, she enters a quiet room glowing pink, where strawberries grow in tall layers.

Just a few years ago, Bharati was living a settled life with a stable job. Everything was secure, predictable, and comfortable. But a part of her longed for something more rooted, maybe a life closer to the soil. 

Where a leap of faith turned into a future-ready farm

When she walked away from her job to become a full-time farmer, she discovered something extraordinary: the future of farming didn’t need soil at all.

Today, in the quiet hills of Kangra, Bharati is earning Rs 2 – 2.5 lakh per month through her high-tech precision vertical farming system — one that grows strawberries, blueberries, basil, rosemary, lettuce, stevia and even seabuckthorn in stacked layers. 

Her farm uses less land and less water and produces high-value crops that are in demand across the region.

Taking high-tech farming to every home

But her journey didn’t stop with her own prosperity.

Bharati, along with her husband Rajiv, is now building small IoT-controlled farming setups — affordable, simple systems that automate crucial parts of farming: nutrient levels, light, humidity, water flow. 

When she realised that most farmers in the hills struggled with small landholdings, unpredictable weather, and limited market exposure, she decided to turn her innovation into a bridge for others.

Together, the couple trains local farmers and women’s self-help groups in IoT-enabled vertical farming, arming them with tools that make farming not just sustainable but profitable, scalable, and exciting again.

Hope, rising in the vertical towers

Bharati and Rajiv share a vision of transforming their village into the first high-tech fruit hub of the Himalayas. Their idea was simple — smart farms, farmers and futures. 

Bharati believes this isn’t just a business — it’s the beginning of what food production in India can look like. “This might be the future of food,” she adds.

And standing in those glowing towers of berries and basil, it’s hard not to believe her.

Because Bharati Boria isn’t just growing crops in vertical stacks — she’s growing possibilities, building courage, and showing the hills that the next revolution may rise quietly, one strawberry tower at a time.