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161. Stumbling onto Sustainable Farming (with Aparna Rajagopal & Priya Shanavas)
Understanding Restoration Ecology
Speakers
With an increasing number of urban, city dwellers finding their way back to agriculture, there’s a small but definite movement towards natural, organic, alternative methods of sustainable farming. While the stress has been on constant productivity to make economic sense, we are now becoming aware of how much damage the land, food culture and native knowledge systems have experienced. As they wait for policy to catch up, two people talk about what moved them to take an active interest in sustainability, preservation and conservation.
In this episode of BIC Talks ecological conservationist Priya Shanavas speaks with lawyer turned farmer and innovator, Aparna Rajagopal about lessons learnt while setting up her self-sustained off the grid model farm, Beejom and several projects housed within it, like preserving and growing traditional, heirloom and native varieties of crops, a seed bank and preserving endangered varieties of indigenous cattle.
Speakers
Aparna Rajagopal
Aparna Rajagopal lives in Noida and farms in western Uttar Pradesh. She was born and brought up in Chennai. A lawyer by training, an artist by nature, a self taught farmer and most importantly a nature lover, she founded Beejom accidentally in 2014 when I went to find land to board a horse. After leasing too much land to just board one lone horse, she found myself on a charpoy under a Jamun tree in the sweltering heat of august 2014 with Masanobu Fukuoka’s “One Straw Revolution”. She read it like I would an adventure novel. When she finished, she looked up at the land she had just leased and saw it in a different light altogether. Priya forgot about the vegetables and grains she had intended to grow and fell in love with the soil instead. Today Beejom is an institution promoting sustainable organic farming practices, restoring the ancient relationship between animals and farmers while promoting soil & water conservation.
Priya Shanavas
Priya Shanavas has been a banker who then went on to run her own business. Alongside, she initiated various projects in the areas of craft and sustainability. With the help of local Ladakhis and a monastery, Priya and her husband oversaw the construction of an artificial glacier, which enables farmers to grow three crops a year instead of one. She also works with Kalamkari artists, handloom weavers and other artisans who were effected by the pandemic by facilitating revenue streams to keep alive these age old art forms. Priya has been a staunch supporter of Navadarshanam, an experimental community that practices sustainable farming and wilderness preservation. She and her husband are currently setting up an organic cardamom plantation near Munnar with native varieties of cardamom.
