161. Stumbling onto Sustainable Farming

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.