Jeevamrut

Coming from an agricultural family, Kanchan Verma from Madhya Pradesh took up farming soon after her marriage. Along with growing vegetables, wheat, and maize, the BA graduate tried turmeric for the first time in 2020. The decision proved fruitful, bringing her higher returns. Here’s how.

A resident of Machilipatnam in Andhra Pradesh, Anna Mani Ratnam grows 100 plants at home, including fruits like red guava and custard apple. From repurposing plastic containers as planters to composting and seed preparation, he shares some important gardening tips.

He grows banana, turmeric, sugarcane, guava, litchi, purple yam and traditional rice varieties in the Surat district.

While he cannot perform manual labour, Singh takes care of pretty much everything else—from deciding cropping patterns, monitoring the sowing, maintenance and harvest activities, overlooking the preparation of Jeevamrut and other biopesticides, and travelling to market his produce and training other farmers!

The harvest from her terrace garden meets 90 per cent of her kitchen needs.

The inspiration came from a few organic farmers that Kshitij and his wife, Neelam Kumari interacted with some years ago.