He studied archaeology and museology, dreaming of opening his own museum where he could host curious visitors and impart knowledge about several ancient traditions.
[caption id="attachment_83734" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="Syed Ghani Khan"]
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When he was 22, Syed’s father had a brain haemorrhage, which left him in charge of the family and the farm as the eldest of the siblings. Syed took up farming and made up his mind to say goodbye to his dream forever.
He started using hybrid farming methods to grow rice like many other farmers in his district. One day, while spraying his crop with pesticides, he had a dizzy spell and fainted. That was the day when realisation hit him.
“People call us farmers ‘anna daata’ (provider of food). But that day I realised that I am not anna daata; I have become visha daata (someone who feeds poison). With all these fertilisers and pesticides, I am growing nothing other than poisonous food. That was when I decided to change my ways,” says Syed.
Also read: TBI Blogs: One Year on, Sikkim Proves Why the Rest of India Must Adopt Organic Practices for a Bright Future
He began using organic compost, but after a few months, he saw no visible effect on his crop. When he looked into the matter, he realised that the crop grown from hybrid rice seeds wasn’t affected by the natural fertilisers at all. He then decided to switch to the more nutritious local traditional rice varieties that would suit the traditional cultivation methods. When he tried to find the traditional varieties, however, he realised that many of the drought-resistant rice varieties of the once dry region, like raja bhog batha, kadi batha and doddi batha, were lost. After the introduction of hybrid seeds that offered much higher yield than the traditional seeds but could not reproduce, farmers had abandoned the traditional varieties, which would provide comparatively low yield, but whose seeds could be used for generations after. Syed struggled to find these traditional seeds that were also naturally resistant to pests. His collection started with a rice variety that no one was able to recognise. A scientist helped him identify it as a native variety of rice that used to grow a long time ago in Mandya but had since been lost.
“I felt concerned, you see! I had heard of so many different varieties while growing up in a farmer family, and now when I wanted to cultivate these varieties, I was finding out that they no longer exist? Something needed to be done about this,” says Syed.
He started tracing these lost varieties of rice, collecting, conserving and even cultivating them.
[caption id="attachment_83735" align="aligncenter" width="750"]
Different varieties of rice[/caption]
That was when the thought of realising his dream of becoming a museum curator occurred to him, by creating a unique living Rice Museum.
He found a handful of rice varieties in the nearby villages of Mandya district but didn’t stop at that. He travelled to the neighbouring districts and states in search of the rice varieties. Within a span of 4 years, he had collected, grown and conserved over 140 unique rice varieties, retaining the unique taste, aroma, colour, size and shape of each variety.
The traditional varieties have many advantages over the hybrid ones.They require less water. Some even have medicinal properties.
“The naturally grown rice varieties have adapted to different climatic conditions and therefore can withstand disasters like floods and droughts that usually destroy the hybrid crop varieties. I select the best of seeds and every year I plant, grow and multiply these seeds to share those with farmers. I am trying to educate the farmers about the importance of these traditional varieties. I don’t give my seeds to big seed companies even when they offer a lot of money,” he says.
After years of perseverance, Syed is now well known among the farmers, who actively seek his advice.
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Syed is the proud curator of his museum[/caption]
Located in the Kirugavulu village of Mandya district, Syed’s Rice Museum as well as the 'Bada Bagh', an orchard renowned for growing over 116 varieties of mangoes, have become must-visit spots for farmers as well as agricultural researchers. His rice museum boasts of more than 850 indigenous rice varieties from all parts of the country.While most of the varieties of rice originate from India, the museum is also home to varieties from Myanmar, Thailand, Pakistan and several other parts of the world. Syed has transformed the farm into a bio-diverse ecosystem, which is host to over 60 species of birds. Maintaining this living museum and perpetuating the lost knowledge to the future generations is his only passion.
Also read: TBI Women: Sowing The Seeds Of Change – Sustainable Agriculture Driven By Women In West Bengal
Syed Ghani Khan has started a fundraiser for his rice museum. To support his cause, click here.
Avantika and Mrityunjay were nothing I had expected of estate owners. No airs, no touch of the sahib, nothing. They were warm, friendly and we immediately hit it off. The first order of business was a cup of tea, obviously. John, Avantika’s life and business partner who is a new tea convert (from coffee), is the official tea brewer in the house, we were told.
Mrityunjay, at his green tea factory.[/caption]
The conversation hummed around tea, interrupted by cups of Assam, then Japanese sencha and even a Taiwanese oolong – which has become my personal favourite.
They made it look easy with the laughter, the harmless ribbing, the stories… but choosing to work on the estate was a conscious choice, and for all three of them, it meant leaving behind fairly lucrative jobs.
Avantika says she knew that she wanted to work on sustainable farming. So she started a social initiative called Mana Organics, working towards sustainable development in rural India. After a few years in Arunachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, working with farmers, she thought why not take her ideas and apply them at her family’s tea estate.
Avantika Jalan, happiest when she’s in the midst of tea.[/caption]
When she moved here, the gardens weren’t doing well and her suggestion to shift to organic farming were met with much resistance from everyone, including senior management. The reason was that tea estates that had turned organic were suffering from dwindling production.
Going organic was a battle that couldn’t be won in a day. Avantika started small, to show that it was the way forward. Every newly planted patch was organic. And then came an unexpected infestation and the field managers dealt with it by spraying the field with pesticides. Says Avantika, “That was the first and the last time this happened.”
Mrityunjay left India to study and work in Singapore before deciding that urban living didn’t suit him. A year ago, he returned home to Chota Tingrai and joined Avantika. Since his return, Mrityunjay has turned things around at Chota Tingrai. His day starts early in the morning when he drives around the estate, meeting the field managers, overseeing the plucking, tasting the tea at every step to make sure it meets his quality standards. Boyishly shy and quiet, it’s hard to get him to talk about himself. Except when you mention sports, his second passion after tea. And he can talk for hours about football.
I ask them if they miss the city and they both say "No." They grew up living the estate life and this is who they are, they insist. Unconventional in the way they run the estate, in the way they live – an unostentatious but beautiful home – in the choices they have made, both Avantika and Mrityunjay are quietly bringing in a new way of working in the industry.
Simi, the young manager at Chota Tingrai’s green tea factory.[/caption]
We met Simi, who is all of 5 ft. tall, 24 years old and the manager of the new green tea factory. Simi started as a management trainee but was quickly given the entire responsibility of the green tea factory when both Mrityunjay and Avantika saw how focused and hardworking she was. And she’s not the only one. All the field assistants are young, driven and enthusiastic. Like Deepa, who is the daughter of the cook at Chota Tingrai, and Mahendra, whose mother was a tea plucker at the estate. In an industry, where hierarchy, experience, and age have always been given so much importance, this is unheard of.
Deepa, field assistant at Chota Tingrai, with her parents.[/caption]
Clearly, theirs is a life committed to tea.
We were sitting outdoors after dinner. The conversation inevitably turned to tea. Is it always like this, I asked. Is tea something that you can’t help but talk about? They laughed and told me of their version of Taboo – where ‘tea’ is ‘taboo’ but you can’t play for too long because on the estate the mornings begin really early.
(Photographs by Tridib Konwar)
Know more about Chota Tingrai 
Photo Credit: Edible Routes[/caption]
Slowly, urban India is seeing a resurgence in plant life. Olive green creepers now spread across the awnings of airy, city restaurants and balcony gardens lend life to previously cramped flats.
In the south, the Garden City of Bengaluru is striving to live up to it’s moniker. In the shadow of a monstrous skyscraper being erected on Sampige Road, across a traffic-clogged street, an organic terrace garden filled with tulsi, chilli, lime and rosemary pumps oxygen into air tainted by the coughing of blackened exhaust pipes. This is 
Sriram Aravamudan
Munchkins Montessori Garden
Photo Credit: Marudam Farm School[/caption]
Once a week, the troupe looks forward to a walk on the nearby Arunachala hill, where the land is viewed as an educational resource. Often, these trips involve learning important lessons about local flora and fauna, making an effort to retain a physical connection with nature. The school operates under the aegis of 
Raj Gilda[/caption]
The NGO began informally in 2006 with $500 and is a $1,00,000 company today, funded by the likes of JP Morgan and the MacArthur Foundation. Founders Raj Gilda and his wife Sunanda Mane believe the reason the organisation has such widespread impact is because it chose to work with existing channels rather than subvert them. Today their staff members have representation in State Education Departments and indirectly help shape policy.
“We realised that we would only impact large numbers if we could get our programme established within the system,” Raj explains. “It has now been approved by secondary school State Boards in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh and is soon to be recognised elsewhere too. Our programmes were first introduced under SUPW classes, but in 2014 they were recognised as full-fledged 100-mark subjects.”
Lend a Hand believes in providing students with a whole gambit of life skills — not necessarily vocational — right from engineering skills like welding, electrical wiring and carpentry to skills required for basic healthcare, agriculture, gardening, landscaping and the usage of renewable energy. As part of their programmes, they recruit local farmers, welders and electricians and train them to instruct at local schools weekly.
“The biggest challenge in the country today is that no one wants to do farming. The next generation of farmers’ kids are college graduates, who want to leave the business. But they're not necessarily getting jobs. We’re trying to promote a love for working with your hands and the soil. Through our programmes students learn things like soil testing and drip irrigation. They’re not experts at the end of it but it does give them practical orientation.”
Initiatives like Gilda’s could go a long way in changing the way the next generation incorporates nature into their quotidian lives. While programmes such as his are a contrived effort for many today, for the current generation of millennials, there is real glamour in the dirt.
It all started with a 15-year-old hobby of Likitha’s mother’s – organic farming. She took a 2-acre area on her family’s 127-acre land in Shankarpalli, Telangana, and started farming on it.
Likitha grew up watching her mother lovingly take care of her field. On this land, she would grow as much as she could, with the idea of making the family self-sustainable in a way that they didn’t need to purchase anything from the market. She would also distribute the produce among family and friends.
In January 2013, she and Padmaja officially launched Terra Greens Organic in Hyderabad with two aims – to spread awareness about organic food, and to help farmers across India adopt this method of farming. With their savings and a bank loan, the duo started its first farming project in Rajasthan, followed by Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, because the demand and understanding of organic farming was better in these states at the time.
They tied up with local farmers who grow produce according to their guidelines, and supply to Terra Greens. The company has now tied up with 4,000 farmers. Terra Greens signs contracts with theses farmers, stating that they will receive buyback guarantee if they grow the required produce.
“What we procure from the farmers is cleaned, packed, and sent to distribution points all over India, from where it goes to all other locations,” says Likitha. In the next few years, they are looking to get 7,000 more farmers on board.
“We then write contracts with farmers saying that they will support them in terms of training and paperwork for organic farming registration and certification. We also fund the certification cost for them. If they produce what Terra Greens wants, they get a premium over market price and we buy it. This way we are also ensuring that the supply chain is intact and we are giving farmers a route to the market. Many farmers growing organic crop in India today are forced to sell it in the conventional market because they do not have access to a company that will absorb all their produce,” says Likitha.
According the Likitha, organic products are costly because the demand is so low, but once the demand increases, the market will improve. “People need to make that extra effort to lead an organic life. It’s a matter of educating yourself and people around you, to go that extra mile and ensure that your food is safe for consumption,” she concludes.
Mahesh[/caption]
Mahesh's farm in Kawlaga[K][/caption]However, he had seen this vicious cycle that a farmer gets trapped in. According to Mahesh, a farmer is always at a loss, regardless of whether nature is on his side or not. If it is drought then the prices of products are high, but the yield is so low that the farmer ends up earning less than what is invested.
Ironically, if the weather conditions are favorable, the production is so high that the rates are lowered. Farmers cannot even store the yield and wait for the prices to go high due to lack of access to warehouses. On top of that is the repayment of loans to moneylenders on huge interest rates.
This cycle repeats, until the farmer ultimately loses his land.
Mahesh was inspired by the stories on The Better India[/caption]
Vinoth Kumar[/caption]
Mahesh started farming in April 2016 on the day of Ugadi. But he did not leave his job. He was sure that he needed the money if anything went wrong. He also wanted to be ready with the infrastructural needs of farming like a pond, warehouse and cowshed.
Mahesh decided to do totally natural and organic farming. As all other farmers who owned the adjacent farms were using chemical pesticides, Mahesh’s farm was naturally attacked by pests. This was a challenge, which again was taken up by Mahesh with organic pesticides and attracting birds by throwing grain on his farms.
Stories of 
Mahesh works on his farms over the weekend[/caption]
He also gives credit to Mr.Bailappa who takes care of his farm and all the contractual farmers who work on his farm on the weekdays.
Today, Mahesh has harvested almost 30 different varieties of millets and lentils from indigenous seeds, which are purely organic. He recently received an award for organic/natural farming from the district agriculture department.
Tur Daal grown organically at Mahesh's farm[/caption]
Traditional meal in Karnataka—ragi balls with lentil curry. To die for.[/caption]
The gentleman immediately tells his wife, “She doesn’t look like she eats ragi.” I interject, almost indignant, that my grandmother insists on eating ragi at least once a week, and I love it. The family immediately warms to me, and we spend almost two hours talking.
For those of you who’ve had the chance to read about the Indian Caste System, you might know how food is deeply entrenched in its maintenance and reproduction. Now, I don’t mean to generalise or reduce the practices of a heterogeneous South to one vignette, but finger millet is traditionally the diet of the farming classes and castes. The so-called “upper castes” (Brahmins) or land-owning castes usually consume rice and wheat as it is more expensive to grow (this is before the public distribution system’s implementation in India).
At the family farm on the Karnataka-Andhra border where I spent my summers as a child.[/caption]
This was an interesting positional moment for me. I’m from a Tamil Brahmin family from urban Bangalore. However, the paternal side has some roots in agricultural life, as most families across castes had some farmland for subsistence. I spent most of my summers as a child in paddy fields with my grandfather. I grew up eating ragi like my family, and never once realised that what I ate could have so many connotations to it.
Meeting with women farmers of Pokhrar.[/caption]
During the initial discussions, I asked some of the women why the popularity of millet had taken a hit. There were a lot of interesting and practical reasons that surfaced—the Public Distribution System (PDS), cooking time, gas consumption, etc. The one that struck me, however, was when a lady said that children refuse to eat finger millet rotis because it is “black” in colour. They fear that consuming it would turn them dark, taking the “you are what you eat” adage quite literally. Now, what can I say to that?
My first internal reaction was anger. How can we have such prejudice about race, and towards our own people? Is the colonial hangover so strong that we’d imbue it to food, at the risk of losing out on precious nutrition? This is where an anthropological approach comes in handy. Understanding my own context, and the larger context of a nation in the process of forming its own post-colonial narrative, helped me greatly.
I couldn’t very well have a chat with them about race and caste relations in the world, and how it is wrong. That would be condescending and insensitive of me, especially when I could also be guilty of implicitly (sometimes explicitly) partaking of this way of thinking. Who am I to pontificate my own thoughts, acquired after years of conditioning and textbooks, in the reality of others? I think most fellows fresh out of academia would identify with this.
Mela organized by the Gene Campaign.[/caption]
The mela’s immediate plan of action was to pictorially, and through theatre, establish strong positive associations to finger millet. The power of the arts is long-standing and effective. Another way was to market our millet sweets as “barfis” or “chocolates” to appeal to the youngsters. I am very happy to say that the mela attendees polished off my 40 thick sweets in seconds.
Race and caste are just two contextual aspects of my experiences with millet. These are only some issues we are attempting to navigate. Now that we know the many contextual nuances of something like millet consumption, we have multiple approaches to tackle issues. This is just one of the facets of my work here.
Gene Campaign, my host organisation, promotes sustainable agriculture in Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh. I work in Orakhan village, Nainital district. The primary focus of my Fellowship is to promote millet consumption in Kumaoni villages. We create products using mountain grains which the women farmers of Kumaon would eventually manufacture and market.
A moringa crop is ready for harvest at a farm near Rajkot town. (Photo Source: Hiren Kumar Bose)[/caption]
Rows of aloe vera fed through drip irrigation. (Photo Source: Hiren Kumar Bose)[/caption]
The initiative will encourage people across the state to start cultivating and consuming organic food. Kerala Bhavan plans to start organic farms in identified lands of 1 acre each in all 14 districts of Kerala. Twenty enthusiastic farmers in each district will grow food using organic methods of farming.
While the farmers sow the seeds, beside the fields, like in the times of Vellari Nadagangal, theatre enthusiasts will attend workshops and practise their plays. And the farmers and artists are not mutually exclusive groups, they will participate in both activities and also take the local community along. The local community can buy seeds at subsidised rates, get their hands dirty in the farms along with the farmers, learn organic practices and also be a part of the play rehearsals.