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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Organic farming: The food forest of Nayagarh -Satyasundar Barik

-The Hindu

Among this year’s Padma Shri awardees are a father and daughter who turned a barren wasteland into a riot of trees and crops

Furrowed with deep gullies, its topsoil all but gone, this degraded patch of land near Odagaon in Odisha’s Nayagarh district was once a dense forest. Whenever nature tried to reclaim it, the little shoots would be nibbled away by goats and sheep. The villagers who owned the land had lost all hope of ever growing crops here. But for Sabarmatee and her father Radhamohan — founders of Sambhav, a non-profit organisation that works on gender and environment — this was precisely what they were looking for: the challenge of rejuvenating land that had been written off.

The duo bought 70 acres with the help of donations and set to work. First, they created a bio-fence by planting bamboo on the edges: unlike a compound wall that takes money to create, the bamboo fence becomes a source of income. Within two years, sprigs of grass appeared in the sunken patches. Then began their project to grow rice, fruits and vegetables. That was three decades ago. Today, Sabarmatee and Radhamohan, recipients of this year’s Padma Shri, gaze upon a ‘food forest’ where there was once an expanse of fissured earth. Here, 500 varieties of rice, 100 types of vegetables and 40 different fruits now grow. The duo has also began documenting yields and preserving seeds.

The Hindu, 15 February, 2020, please click here to read more.