Bihar farmers

From onions and mushrooms to strawberries and processing units, SumArth’s holistic model transformed farming across 500 villages — turning recurring costs into recurring income.

Prabhat Kumar runs SumArth, an NGO that has impacted the lives of 25,000 farmers in 500 villages of Bihar by helping them switch from outdated agricultural practices to new cash crops like onions.

Nikki Kumar Jha and his sister Rashmi Jha from Bihar have come up with a unique innovation called ‘Sabjikothi’ that can extend the shelf-life of fruits and vegetables from 3 to 30 days.

A native of Bihar's Barauli village, Abhishek Kumar left his well-paying job to take up farming on his ancestral land in 2011. Today, he is associated with 95 Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) in the country, having mentored more than 2 lakh farmers to date.

From AC carts that sell fair trade vegetables to tractor driving lessons for village women, Kaushlendra's unique initiatives have turned around the lives of thousands of impoverished farmers.