372 Anand Ethirajalu - Harvesting the clouds: how to transition over 10,000 farmers a year, reducing input costs and increasing profits

A conversation with Anand Ethirajalu, farmer-turned-ecologist and project director for the Save Soil movement.

We don’t talk about it much, but we should: a remarkable transition has been unfolding on the Indian subcontinent over the past few decades. Hundreds of thousands- if not millions- of farmers have been trained in regenerative practicesand have successfully made the switch. Yes, with higher yields and greater profits, largely due to significantly lower production costs.

In the conversation, we focus on one region where the Save Soil movement, led by Sadhguru, has been training more than 10,000 farmers per year.

There are countless lessons to be learned. Soil can recover quickly, but shifting farmers’ mindsets often takes much longer. One key strategy: don’t risk the whole farm. Start with just 10%, and show immediate financial results—higher profits. Provide crucial support in the early years, especially during the first growing season.

More and more farmers are also joining programs to plant permanent crops like timber and fruit trees, both as a form of insurance and with the broader goal of planting enough trees (currently over 12 million a year) to begin “harvesting the clouds”. 

More about this episode.

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In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Anand Ethirajulu
• 1:08:51 What should smart investors, who want to invest in Reg ag and food look out for?
• 1:12:57 What would you do if you were in charge of a 1B investment portfolio tomorrow morning?
• 1:17:58 What do you believe is true about regenerative agriculture that others don’t believe to be true? Inspired by John Kempf
• 1:19:13 If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing in the agriculture industry from a sustainability point of view, what would it be?

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

We don't talk a whole lot but we should about the remarkable transition happening on the subcontinent of India in the last decades. Hundreds of thousands of farmers, if not millions, have been trained in regenerative practices and have successfully transitioned yes, with higher yields and higher profit, mainly because of way lower production costs. We focus in this interview on one region where the Save the Soils movement of Sadhguru yes, the guy who drove around the world on his motorcycle in 2022, if I remember correctly pushed really hard on the importance of soil has been training farmers at this point, over 10,000 a year. So many lessons have been learned. Soil transition rather quickly, but farmers' mindset need a lot of time. Don't risk the whole farm, but start with 10% and show immediate financial results. Higher profit Provide crucial hand-holding in the first years, especially the first growing season, which translated in this case to the farmer having access to WhatsApp groups where they get expert advice for any pest and disease within 24 to 48 hours, and it's always advised that he or she can make immediately themselves without relying on any expensive toxic inputs. More and more farmers are part of programs to plant permanent crops like timber and fruit trees, as insurance and with the overarching goal to plant enough trees and they currently plant about 12 million or so to start harvesting the clouds. Yes, we are covering restoring small water cycles in this episode, but we also cover the political scene, as the Indian government has made natural farming the goal for the next few decades. This is probably a first globally and it will require a lot of work, of course, to make this right, but it also shows the immense work of grassroots regenerative movements in India. Yes, there will be a lot of pushback from the agri-input industry and, of course, government policy will never be perfect, but this is still a massive moment to celebrate. Government policy will never be perfect, but this is still a massive moment to celebrate.

Speaker 1: 1:53

This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast, where we learn more on how to put money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems, while making an appropriate and fair return. Welcome to another episode today with farm return. Ecologist and project director for the Save the Soil movement on groundwork. Welcome, anand. Hello Cohen, nice to meet you and to start and I know there's a fascinating story here because we had a call a few months ago and to explore the angles, etc. But we always love to start with a personal story angles, et cetera but we always love to start with a personal story. Why do people spend most of their waking hours focusing on soil? Because there are some, let's say, quote unquote I'm doing air quotes for the people that are not watching easier career paths out there and so why soil? In your case, how come you spend most of your time probably also your sleeping time thinking about how to improve, regenerate, restore soils?

Speaker 2: 2:47

I have to kind of give a flashback story from my childhood, please do so. When I was in my 10th grade, there was an opportunity for me to submit a science project in my school and when I was looking at what topic should I take, I somehow stumbled upon food security and I took up food security and food adulteration. So more than food security, I focused more on food adulteration and I spent the next almost nine months collecting information on data on what are the kind of food adulteration that is happening, and at that time I was not having access to internet, so there was no internet. I'm talking about 1998 and I used to collect news articles from newspapers where there will be a small corner publishing that you know. They found this adulteration in coffee and this adulteration in tea and so on, so forth, and I found out that almost everything that I consume is adulterated my rice is adulterated with silica, my coffee is adulterated with tamarind seeds, tea is adulterated with cow dung, biscuits are adulterated with human hair and my vegetables are adulterated with pesticides and insecticides. My fruits are adulterated with post-harvest ripening agents which are mostly carcinogenic.

Speaker 2: 4:11

So when I understood that, in spite of having a very good lifestyle because my father was an engineer in a public sector company. I'm not able to have healthy food, which means that I'm not going to have a healthy lifestyle when I'm in my 40s or 50s or whatever. So this gave me a kind of an idea that what is the point of becoming an engineer or a doctor or a good accountant if I don't get to have access to healthy food? So that gave me a kind of a waking call and I discussed with my father that I want to be having complete control over my food. So instead of me becoming an engineer or a doctor, I would like to become a farmer. So how did that conversation go? It went very well, because he was looking to undo his sins of being an engineer and polluting the world and he wanted a of a how do you say uh, uh, uh, a way of giving back to the nature. And, uh, both of us decided together and we bought a small piece of land, a two hectare piece of land, where we wanted to grow our own food.

Speaker 2: 5:16

So in 98, we started this experiment and within a span of three years we were able to grow our own fruits, our own grains, our own vegetables, our own cereals, pulses, oils.

Speaker 2: 5:27

We had our own poultry and cow, so even the milk and eggs, everything was from my farm and I was able to very easily get accustomed to this that after eating my own food, which is completely organic and healthy, I was not able to feel good about the food that is served in restaurants and other places where they just cook with anything that is available.

Speaker 2: 5:52

So this was my first experiment and I was able to see that I am also able to make very good money out of it, because whatever that was surplus beyond the consumption of me and my family, I just put it on a basket outside my house in the veranda and kept a weighing scale and a jar which said pay as you like. And people came my friends and colleagues from the same township in which I grew up. They came to know that I'm doing this and they came and they experimented by taking some fruits and vegetables and whatnot, and they slowly started becoming my regular customers. And because I made it pay as you wish, as a social experiment, I wanted to see if people are ready to pay good money for healthy food and after a few months I was able to see that people were generally giving more money than they were supposed to give for my produce and that gave me like an idea, like did you put like a suggestion like per kilo, this or nothing, because they open to them?

Speaker 2: 6:53

They know they're going to the market and purchasing it on a regular basis. They know the optimal price and few people gave much lesser than what the market price was. I was okay with it. So basically it was a social experiment to see whether people value healthy food and it was a success. Of course it's a small community and a small set of people, but of course the social experiment was a success and with that money I was able to purchase a Royal Enfield, which is like a very esteemed motorcycle that you can purchase during those times. So when I entered my first year college I had my own Royal Enfield, which is bought from the earnings from my farm, and I used to fuel up and kind of tour across South India to meet other farmers who have done this successfully so that I can learn from them and probably bring more efficiency, more yield, more profitability and so on so forth. So this gave me a view of the status of Indian agriculture and what is happening across a wider spectrum in the agriculture sector, and it also saddened me to a large extent because of the level of adversity in climate risk and as well as market risk that the farmers are facing and the kind of farmer suicide that happens in the country is really alarming. Some statisticians say that the total number of lives lost is more than the number of people put together in all the wars. So in that context I was a little moved that this needs to be a larger solution.

Speaker 2: 8:30

So there was a mentor called Dr Namalwar. He is considered as the father of organic farming in Tamil Nadu. In 1960s he started preaching that we cannot go through this industrial agriculture setup as a long-term solution because it will slowly deplete the soil, it will kind of reduce the soil fertility and the productivity over a period of time. Nobody took him seriously in the first 30 years of his work but eventually by early 90s, people started seeing the aftermath of these harmful chemicals of pesticides, insecticides and weedicides because of the health issues and reduced productivity and so on so forth. He became a kind of a big figure in southern India who inspired thousands and thousands of farmers to take up regenerative agriculture, of farmers to take up regenerative agriculture.

Speaker 2: 9:28

He was my personal mentor and he helped me convert my farm into a training center where I was able to convert a few hundred farmers around my farm into regenerative agriculture.

Speaker 2: 9:35

That was my initial taste of being part of a larger purpose rather than just living happily within my two acre piece of land. So that inspired me to be part of a larger program. And then in 2004, when Sadhguru started Project Green Hands, which is the erstwhile program of Safe Soil, where the vision was to bring back 33% green cover in the state of Tamil Nadu by planting 114 million trees and also help rejuvenate the farming land by bringing in more organic content and bringing in regenerative farming. When this program happened, with dr namalwar and sadguru coming together, we were able to scale this program under the vision of sadguru in much bigger way. And what started with a few hundred farmers, with Sadhguru's guidance and vision, we are now able to cater to close to 10,000 farmers every year to convert them into regenerative farming, and we are helping more than 30,000 farmers to transition to tree-based agriculture under two different initiatives that we will be looking into in this podcast.

Speaker 1: 10:46

That's a long introduction, but I'm sorry, no absolutely fascinating and relevant and I think the point you make of, yeah, you could just live just between brackets not easy whatsoever on your two hectares. Or if you're a larger farmer in different places, you can have your piece of paradise and you can live well, you can buy a nice motorcycle. But if every farmer around you is still struggling or struggling with the non-regenerative practices and the pesticides, et cetera, like, how much value is there? Some of that will come into your farm as well. Plus, what is your community going through? If your piece're a piece of paradise, it's ideal, but the rest is definitely degrading and I think many farmers struggle with that because it is so much work to go through yourself. And then, how do you start the educating piece and how do you build this into much, much.

Speaker 1: 11:37

This is a significant movement beyond your farm gate and beyond maybe the four neighbors or 10 neighbors you have, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1: 11:46

And so, just to paint a picture, now you're saying we're training and we're going to unpack a bit how the training looks like 10,000 farmers now, a year into a regenerative transition, into a transition based on ecology and agroecology how does that work? How do you manage? Because I think it's a big question for many of us in the space Like, okay, work, how do you manage? Because I think it's a big question for many of us in the space like, okay, how do you scale this mindset education piece? I mean the practices are one thing, the technologies, maybe some of the machinery, cd seeds etc. Is, is are all big questions, but the training and hands-on to guide farmers through this transition, is is still not at scale in many places and it sounds like in your region it absolutely is. So how do you go about training 10,000, which is a massive number even though you have a lot of farmers, a massive number per year? And then we'll get to the tree-based system as well, which is fascinating.

Speaker 2: 12:37

The 10,000 number. It grew over a period of 10 years. It didn't happen overnight, of course. When we started the program, we started hand-holding 350 farmers and we made a very conscious call that we will only scale up our training and awareness initiatives only to the extent to which we are able to give hand-holding support to farmers. So what we found as a problem statement when we saw what is happening to the farmers who go through a variety of regenerative agriculture training, we saw what is happening to the farmers who go through a variety of regenerative agriculture training programs. What is happening to them.

Speaker 2: 13:17

For the last 30 years there have been several organizations and stalwarts who have taken up regenerative farming as a life mission and they worked on it. It is not that we were the only ones who started it in this part of the country, but what we saw as lacking is that after the training program, there is no structured hand-holding setup. Now, say we have to imagine the life of a farmer. His father, his grandfather have been practicing conventional system of a farmer. His father, his grandfather have been practicing conventional system of agriculture using synthetics, pesticides and insecticides. For them it is a day-to-day thing. They don't even know that it's harmful to them or the environment. So when we go and give a new system of practice, saying that doing this it was going to reduce your cultivation cost and that is the key incentive for them to even consider transition to another system it is going to reduce your input cost in cultivation and hence you will have larger profits compared to your conventional systems.

Speaker 2: 14:16

So when we explain this, the farmers are ready to jump in, they get inspired, they feel okay, there is a much profitable way of looking at agriculture and they get into it. But when they face the first instance of disease or pest, they don't know what to do. They used to just make a spray and get done with it. Now it's a complex aspect when it comes to regenerative farming because each pest has characteristics and the solution that you need to adopt within the framework of nature-based solutions is very unique to every pest and every crop. So giving them a hand holding setup where, within 24 to 48 hours, we should give a practical solution which is region specific and the farmer can adopt with the locally available materials to prepare the pest repellent or concoction that will help him bring the crop out of the disease.

Speaker 1: 15:10

So really like that first setback somebody face or first challenge is such a crucial one because you don't want them to reach into the cupboard and take whatever spray they used to take against this insect or against this disease, et cetera, and you need to be fast because you could lose a significant crop because of that.

Speaker 2: 15:28

So when the numbers were small, where 350 farmers were there, we were able to go physically to each land and meet the farmer and do it. Then the numbers started growing and we were out of hands. So then we devised a WhatsApp system where we created we brought all the farmers into WhatsApp groups, which is again region specific. Each district will have a WhatsApp system where we created, we brought all the farmers into WhatsApp groups, which is again region specific. Each district will have a WhatsApp group and the farmers in that WhatsApp group will be guided by a combination of technical experts from our team and also resource leaders from the farming community who has done this for more than 10 years, and they come and give the kind of solution for the problems that the farmers are facing Now. For example, a farmer will just take a photo of the pest and he will put it on the whatsapp group and he will ask request for a solution Within 24 hours. The farmer resource leaders, as well as our technical team, will give at least three or four different solutions for the same problem and the farmer can choose from the four different options based on the local materials that is available for him to prepare the concoction in a very short span of time and handle the issue.

Speaker 2: 16:34

So this particular hand-holding support, in addition to this, a helpline system where a farmer can call Suppose they are not savvy on smartphones, where they are using WhatsApp and so on. Still, there is a significant section of the farmers who are not using smartphones. So we have a 9 am to 9 pm helpline system that works all seven days of the week, 365 days of the year, irrespective of what celebration or whatever. This helpline is on, where a farmer can call us and it will be connected to a resource leader or a technical staff who will be able to kind of give solutions to them on a real-time basis.

Speaker 2: 17:12

This hand-holding support made the real change where the trust in the movement started happening year on year. The 350 became 700 within a year, the 700 became 2000-3000 within two to three years and now it has grown to 10,000. And we are confident that we'll be able to scale it up. The real limitation is the support in terms of financial resources for the program to really expand and increase the number of team, increase the number of training programs and include and take this to more and more farmers and include and take this to more and more farmers and we'll get to that as well.

Speaker 1: 17:50

but how long are farmers in these programs and after how long do you see that they need less and less handholding? And do they still stay in the WhatsApp groups? Do they keep asking questions? How does the transition move over time?

Speaker 2: 18:02

Usually the first one year is the most critical period.

Speaker 2: 18:05

Their first trial crop, even if they have, say, two or three hectares of land, we request them to start this regenerative practice just in half a hectare of land or one acre of land, which will give them a learning curve and an experience so that they don't burn their fingers by going through an entire crop loss, so that they don't burn their fingers by going through an entire crop loss.

Speaker 2: 18:29

So their risk appetite we gauge the risk appetite and we ask them to take a 10% risk in terms of the land area that they bring into regenerative farming in the first year. And after one year they get more expertise because in a year probably they will grow two to three crops in one year and with three cropping cycles they'll get a fairly good idea how to manage their cropping cycles. They'll get a fairly good idea how to manage their cropping systems under regenerative farming. Usually from second year they're very much on their own and by third year they're very confident that this is profitable and it is working well for them and how many like what's the success rate in terms of um how many people stay in the program?

Speaker 1: 19:04

or or many people, how many farmers like stop at some point? Or like what's the completion? It's, of course it's not a completion thing, but like how does it work in terms of fallout?

Speaker 2: 19:16

On an average, we see one third completely transitioning in a period of one to two years. Two thirds they actually start in a small way. They still use some chemical fertilizers, but they stop using harmful pesticides and herbicides and so on. So it will come under the category of non-pesticide management rather than complete regenerative farming, which is also very pragmatic. We cannot change the entire ecosystem into regenerative farming overnight. If that happens, it will have a catastrophic impact in terms of shortage of food globally. So that is something that we are very careful that we don't threaten food security of a nation or any community, and hence the transition has to be a phased transition and if farmers want to first play safe by using synthetic fertilizer and just avoid pesticide and harmful other what to say insecticides, that is fine with us, and within a span of another two or three years, they also start transitioning completely into regenerative farming.

Speaker 1: 20:15

And you mentioned in the prequel, like it takes two to three years when the skills of observation come back, like that's the big thing you do, like bringing the observational skills back of farmers. Can you talk a bit more about that mindset shift or or learning there in terms of it's a very different approach to to farming, from waking up and and killing a lot of things or trying to keep hope, like desperately, um, keeping a few crops alive to much more observational, emerging and and facilitating. But of course it requires a requires a different approach to the land as well. What do you see there?

Speaker 2: 20:50

Actually you nailed it when we talk in international forums we say that the farmers are the most vulnerable community and so on, but we actually, when we get on the ground, their mindset is the biggest enemy to know to actually transition them into alternative system. We don't try to blame them but because of generational kind of practices into a certain certain kind of practice, for them to change any practice is very difficult. It's a mindset problem. The mindset problem we are tackling by bringing in farmers as the resource leaders in all our training programs and awareness programs.

Speaker 2: 21:26

We have a YouTube channel where we have hundreds of success stories and testimonials of farmers who have converted to regenerative practices and they are making their agriculture a very profitable activity and also they have de-risked their farm against climate risks as well as market risks. So this testimonial and the confidence that farmers have done this is the most important part, because in the initial years when I went and spoke the farmer, two farmers will get up and say, ah, you can do anything. Isha Foundation will find the resource to know to make it a success. So we stopped speaking a lot to the farmers. Rather, we brought in people who we made as model farmers. When they come and speak, the transition is more sustainable and more permanent and it is also the quickest way to change a farmer's mindset.

Speaker 1: 22:32

We've seen that so often anywhere, like farmer to farmer. Farmers need to see something, obviously because it's a risky transition. It's a risky. Farmers need to see something, obviously because it's a risky transition, it's a risky move. And they need to see something in their local context because otherwise always the argument could be yeah, that works over there, it doesn't work here, or that's another type of soil and it's another type of climate and it's another type. There's always something. But if you see your neighbor or neighbor of neighbor of neighbor do something and explain the pitfalls apart from the fact that you save a lot of time because probably he or she has been going through the transition and can tell you what works and what doesn't but it also creates obviously a peer structure and a structure of trust. To come to the finance piece, how are these programs? Before that, I just want to add two more elements to it.

Speaker 2: 23:12

One element is that when a farmer comes and presents himself, that is one thing, but we will ask the farmer to give his contact details, his mobile number and the location of his farm and open his farm for exposure visits of the farmers who are getting trained. That will actually convert the real trust, because anybody can come and speak anything in a forum, but only if the farmer is having the guts to allow others to come and see what he is doing. Then he will stand by his words and his commitment. That is one thing. The second element is when we reach farmers, we don't talk about soil, we don't talk about environment or climate change or anything. We simply talk economics. We tell the farmer you are spending, say, $100 to cultivate your land. Now if I say that the same yield can be achieved by spending $60, are you okay to trial it out? Then they're all excited oh, what is this? What is this new thing?

Speaker 2: 24:05

Then we try to walk them through the principles of regenerative farming, how to reduce costs, how to reduce fertilizer, how to reduce labor, how to reduce water. Then the traction happens. The moment we start speaking about ecology or the climate change, they don't really relate to these problems. Of course, their agriculture is suffering because of climate change, but their personal experience still has not received the impact of climate change in a very big way, and this is a very strange phenomenon. They see things happening in front of their eyes, but they don't see that this is mainly because of wrong practices in agriculture. So this is where the disconnect is, and we try to bring that connect in a very indirect way by focusing on economics, and that has been one of our success strategies with farming, community and to double click on that.

Speaker 1: 24:57

Do you see that notion of, or that mindset almost of, climate and resilience and more than economics? Does that come in as well over time, like two, three, four, five years? Do you see a transformation as well from a, let's say, mindset kind of things, or let's say, some people call it the real estate between your ears of the successful ones that maybe didn't make that connection three years ago but now actually are are the biggest advocate?

Speaker 2: 25:26

yes, actually it does. How it happens is that? Because, like you said earlier, the skill of observation is the biggest skill set that the farmer will have to bring in when he uh bring, gets into regenerative farming. When this level of observation happens, he starts seeing how the plant is responding to variety of inputs, how the soil is responding, what is the macro and microbial life that is thriving in the soil. Once they start seeing this, then they start understanding they have to tune themselves to mother nature and start observing and start responding to nature in a very fundamental way for them to be successful in regenerative farming.

Speaker 2: 26:03

Many of the farmers when we went and met, uh we, when we meet during our field visits, the, when we ask are you not using any chemicals at all?

Speaker 2: 26:12

Out of suspicion, we ask them are you using little urea or dap or some pesticide? When actually some pest comes, they will simply say that, even if I want to, my wife doesn't let me do it. So they have seen the benefit in multiple dimensions by eating healthy food and seeing the changes in soil how many spider webs they are able to now see in the soil, which is actually eating the pest. How many butterflies are coming, which is helping pollination and so on, so forth, that this skill of observation is giving a kind of a transformatory experience for the farmers, that they see that they are part of this entire larger ecosystem and they will have to know, understand the elements of climate change and soil fertility and so on elements of climate change and soil fertility and so on, which is fascinating and scary at the same time to see that the people closest to the land, farmers everywhere apparently, have lost recently or semi-recently this skill of observation.

Speaker 1: 27:17

Like we know, farmers now, that in big mechanized farms they never touch the soil. They get in the tractor, do the tours and actually never get out and feel, touch, sense and smell, which is just a small example, not to pick on any of that. But that sense of observation like also when you apply certain things and observe if the plant is responding, the only thing we probably observe is if the pest is gone or not. Like that's sort of very binary but not okay. How is a plant suffering or not suffering? Is there life? Are there butterflies or anything Like that? We sort of have been numbed or disconnected from our own senses because you can hear if they're insects or not, like it's not that, but somehow we muted that.

Speaker 2: 27:49

Very true, I totally agree with you and I observe the same characteristics, not just with farmers, but people from all walks of life. When I used to be young, if I have a headache or a fever, my grandmother used to tell just pluck these leaves, make it into a concoction and drink it for three days, you'll be, you'll be okay, and we used to do that. Today, if I'm getting a fever, when I, when I see people getting a fever, they want to pop up a pill and just close it. So there are, there are very uh what to say? Natural ways of handling many things which are, uh part and parcel of our uh indigenous knowledge and culture, which has been taken out in the name of modernization and bringing more efficiency and more uh what to say? Quick fix for our problems. The quick fix is needed at very critical times, but when you're, it cannot be transformed into a long-term solution. That's the part that people know all of us need.

Speaker 1: 28:45

We need to remember and getting back to the, the financial piece, like how, how has this monumental, massive work been financed until now? Like, how do you because I know some of the work on zero budget natural farming has been in some states I don't think where you are somehow financed through savings in fertilizer subsidies or chemical fertilizer subsidies there's some smart people have been able to to bend that stream of a lot of money going overseas to support a lot of companies we don't want to into actually training farmers. How have you been able to to do this? Because hand-holding 10 000 farmers a year, and then the ones from the last year and then the one, this is an accumulative piece of work. How have you managed to to tackle that?

Speaker 2: 29:29

one thing is that we want to keep this as a movement rather than a project, because when you make it a movement, a farmer to farmer element starts kicking in after a few years. Of course, in the first five years we were on project mode, where we were monitoring every farmer and ensuring every farmer is getting answered and everything. Now, once you create a larger ecosystem of well-wishers, of farmers, then we are seeing that the movement is carrying on in a much more effortless manner. That is one part. Another part is that for our direct cause to organize a program, to hire a team of people who are dedicatedly looking into providing solutions for these farmers, we are raising donations through CSR contributions and well-wishers who want to donate for such causes. So that's how we try to raise our funds.

Speaker 2: 30:21

But this is not a sustainable way to scale up to a country's requirements. So parallelly, we have started working on the policy sector, with Sadhguru leading the thought leadership in terms of bringing the importance of saving soil at this era and this moment. So with this, we have special teams which are working with the government and the policymakers on a day-to-day basis to see that we use these two decades of experience on the ground and bring key learnings and put it into the team as recommendations for bringing a soil policy to the team, as recommendations for bringing a soil policy. So this is what we have been working parallelly and we are getting more and more traction.

Speaker 2: 31:06

For example, it is not because of us, of course, but the government themselves have realized the importance of this requirement and in India they have started a national mission on natural farming. So that is a very big move. This is the first time after independence that the Ministry of Agriculture has taken up a national mission for regenerative farming and I'm quite excited that after 20 years of work, we actually see a possibility of turning the entire country into a regenerative farming community. Turning the entire country into a regenerative farming community, of course, it requires a lot of strategic maneuvers, a lot of incentives and disincentives of modern farming or industrial farming. So a lot of things are required, but I think the compass needle is set in the right direction. A lot of momentum is being gained by civil societies as well as within the government to go in the right direction.

Speaker 1: 32:02

Yeah, I mean that sounds like building a civil, grassroot movement and then at some point which is sort of the ideal like influencing policy, and influencing not only the negative policies that currently keep the extractive system as it is and sustain it to a certain extent or to a big extent, depending on subsidy levels, depending on taxes and all kinds of things but also showing an alternative and actually getting behind an alternative like this and showing what is needed to really build it over time and go from 10,000 to 1 million to et cetera farmers per year. And then you get it to a tipping point. And then, of course, there are all kinds of things that could go wrong there. It needs a lot of strategic work, but I saw the announcement, which of course, is a tribute to all the work grassroot movements have been doing over the last decades to show that farmers are ready, willing, absolutely able, if you give the right handholding holding.

Speaker 1: 33:02

It's not a super complex, impossible thing to do. You don't need new magical technology. Some of the technology helps absolutely, but it's not a that we have to wait for x years to. To do this. It can be done now. It can be scaled relatively straightforwardly, like you have to, like you, know what is needed to get this to a whole state level and to different states, et cetera, et cetera, and I think it's one of the first countries that ever has a mission focused on regenerative agriculture, on a con, of course, in this case a subcontinent level. Even this is more than a country Many people forget. I think most of your states are more or less a country and many, many other places in terms of size and impact.

Speaker 2: 33:40

Um and Sadhguru, obviouslyguru, obviously I mean, the thing became famous two, three years ago, when was the tour?

Speaker 1: 33:42

um, throughout the yeah 2022? Like honors motorcycle uh, wasn't yours right? No similar one, uh, going around the world with a flag on on basically saying soil is important and fundamental. We need policy, um, and I think got on many talk shows and many big podcasts as well around the world. Didn't make it to ours, unfortunately. No, I'm joking, but interestingly, for the first time, I think, we outside India learned about that and learned about this movement that has been so successful already and still so underrepresented in many other places. So that helped and now it made it into policy. Of course, we'll see how that plays out, but it's a first globally, I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 2: 34:23

See, humbly saying that we are one among the several people who are working towards this goal. Sadhguru was instrumental in making the cause louder, but it doesn't mean that we were the only people working on this. There are hundreds of people I can pick out in terms of names who have given their entire life in this sector to ensure that we have a better tomorrow. So hats off to all those people that the momentum is all coming together, their life's work is all coming together and the government has been what to say? Courteous enough to take this, what to say? Courteous enough to take this request with utmost seriousness to bring the necessary policy changes that we are hoping to transform this nation.

Speaker 1: 35:10

And from that work in policy, just asking for all the other countries that don't have this yet and for all the people that are listening, that are not in India, and thinking I need like what were you know? I don't know if you were part of this process, but what made the policymakers listen? Was it the climate piece, the health angle, the urban or the rural livelihoods, like? What did you see as critical things that made them lean in and like, oh, this is important, because we've been shouting for many years that agriculture policies should be different and somehow we haven't really gotten anywhere except in India.

Speaker 2: 35:44

See the conventional systems started failing, the repeated usage of all the synthetics. If it had nurtured the soil, if it had nurtured the microbial life, if it had nurtured the food systems, I don't think we would have come to this point of thinking of a different policy change. The existing systems have reached their threshold. They have started failing. The fertilizer usage has increased by 18 to 24 times on an average, but the food productivity has gone up just by 2 times to 3 times. So when this is the case, the cost of cultivation is keeping on increasing.

Speaker 2: 36:22

But to keep the nation in a very stable environment, they cannot hike the price of food for the common people, especially in a country like India with more than a billion people. You cannot afford to have governance when the food prices skyrocket, to have governance when the food prices skyrocket. Because of this, the farming has been set as a stage to fail, where the input cost is keeping on increasing, the fuel prices are keeping on increasing, the fertilizer cost is keeping on increasing, but the food price is not increasing. And this is being substituted by subsidies on electricity, on fertilizers, on tractors and machinery and waiving off their loans and so on and so forth. But it cannot be a sustainable solution if we really care for the next 20, 30, 40 years and what are we going to leave for the next generation.

Speaker 2: 37:11

So in that context, I am really proud that the government was able to have a long-term vision towards this.

Speaker 2: 37:18

They were able to see that the current food system is starting to fail and if we don't make the right measures today, in 25 to 30 years' time we'll be under deep trouble in terms of feeding the entire nation. And even though the policy direction is in the right way, the political leaders have taken a realistic expectation of taking a timeline of 20 to 25 years for the transition to happen, because India is a country, like you said, it's like a continent and we have more than 154 million farmers and if you count their families, then we are looking at a huge population which is under the agriculture activity. To make this transition, like we we said, the hardest part is the mindset change. It will take its time, but with the right policies, with the right incentives and with a stable political leadership beyond electoral years, I think this this will be a reality yeah, and I think you touch upon a fun like the long-term beyond electrocycles long-term view here, but also resisting against very vocal, let's say, old system or old industry.

Speaker 1: 38:30

Basically, like, the narrative is always, unless you farm a chemically driven and high input driven, we're going to starve and high input driven, we're going to starve. And. But getting back to my question, just to like the amount of pressure against these kinds of transitions from the current system with all its I mean not to blame, but it's definitely focused on keeping things the same and the narrative of feeding the world and the narrative we need all these inputs and the narrative of farmers don't want to change and the narrative of feeding the world and the narrative we need all these inputs and the narrative of farmers don't want to change and the narrative of basically, if you want to do any kind of transition, you're going to starve people, et cetera, et cetera, has been very, very strong and probably has been resisting a lot of these measures and policies and focus areas in other places, in other jurisdictions. Big one I know relatively well is the European Cup, which is a massive subsidy system, the Common Agriculture Policy, which has been captured by the industry and we've been trying, and with EADA, european Alliance for the Change of Agriculture, trying to make it a soil-focused thing. It's not going to be easy, but it's very nice to see that in other places this is, and also here, of course, crops are starting to fail, maybe less visually and less people are involved in farming, like that's also I think it's less in your face, almost compared to India, but also in the US.

Speaker 1: 39:48

Of course, there's a huge battle on the crop insurance and how that should serve farmers and actually isn't and should serve farmers long-term. So I just want to applaud taking a long-term view and going against significant pressure from an input industry that is profiting from subsidies and is profiting from the current system and would love anything that extends it a bit longer. Like, any day extra is a couple of billion and any day, any year extra is a lot of money, and so somehow, yeah, being resistant to those lobby activities is just is not easy, let's say, and definitely something that is going to try to get back in as well and try to have, like one field harvest somewhere is going to be a fuel and ammunition to say, you see, this doesn't work, we're going to go down if we focus on soil. So how do you resist in your context, let's say this this kind of narratives and and potential attacks I would like to respond in two different ways.

Speaker 2: 41:19

One is to reach a critical mass of people in any society for them to ask for a particular solution. It depends on a percentage of the population and if we see the global north, probably to hit the critical mass and make them transition into regenerative practices by attracting them or levering them in the concept of better profits. While doing regenerative farming rather than talking about soil and various other elements, you just make the farmer see that you earn more by doing this and we generate a critical mass and that people of critical mass. They reach their political leadership and say that we want the solution to be scaled up. See, end of the day, the political leadership. They want to listen to what the electoral people are asking for. As simple as that. If people want more animals, they will bring a policy to arrive.

Speaker 1: 42:13

More animals, they want more technology in a functional, in a functional democracy, which is under threat in some places yes, but in theory in theory. In theory, it is this yeah, no, but it's, it's true. I mean we have to.

Speaker 2: 42:24

You can't expect a policymaker yes to war to be ahead of the crowd like that's not going to happen so in that way, yeah, we feel that in whichever community we want to create an impact, if we see that policy work is one front that we have to keep working on, parallelly, we have to also prepare the ground and have enough successful farmers on the ground who can be testimonials of success, because without that, any government policy. The first question that they ask is that okay, where is the proof? I cannot show five farmers and say that this is the proof that it works. I have to show 5 000 farmers. I have to show 50 000 farmers to say that it actually works at scale. So then they we have a strong argument to sit across the table and discuss. Okay, what do we want to do? So in that context, I wouldn't say that, uh, onees the other, both have to go in a parallel track and ensure that we meet at a certain point.

Speaker 2: 43:18

Having said that, in India, it is a very complex country. It's again a democratic country with a lot of how do you say political parties and alignments and so on, and outside the nation, influence and interference, and so on, so forth, and outside the nation, influence and interference, and so on, so forth. But we are fortunate to have a certain kind of strong leadership, which is what to say, marching the nation towards a certain well-being for the nation. And we see there is a certain consistency in approach in the reforms that has been brought in, for example. I can keep talking about it, but it will become like a political promotion. I don't want to do that. I'm a citizenary. I'm not aligned to any political party. I'm seeing real-time changes on the ground. I'm for farmers, so a lot of the programs that was launched in the last 10, 15 years, the benefits directly go to the farmer's bank account. There is no intermediary involved. Where the concept of leakage? That if $100 is spent from the government, they used to say that less than $10 or less than $5 actually reach the farmer. So in that context, if government is giving 100 rupees, having a digital infrastructure in the country where the 100 rupees can actually go into the farmer's account itself is a huge transformation. So when the government has set out to fix a few fundamental issues, even if they have very good policies and very good schemes, but if the transmission lines are faulty and leaking, what is the point? I mean you can't do anything with that kind of what to say a governance structure. So these elements, by and large, has been fixed by the government in the last 10, 15 years.

Speaker 2: 44:52

I don't want to go into the politics of it, but it seems like we are marching in the right direction. We are hoping that we will be able to fight against the pressures of different kinds of lobby which will try to influence and sabotage these kinds of policies towards regenerative agriculture, policies towards regenerative agriculture. At the same time, we should take responsible measures that we don't make any overnight shifts to one particular system, to another particular system, which can jeopardize the food security of the nation. It can put a lot of people's livelihoods out of place. Even if people who have been selling chemicals it's not that they intend to poison people they're doing this their livelihood. So transition has to happen in such a way that there is a strategy in place, there is a plan in place and there is a compensation in place. So yeah, I mean all this have to fall in.

Speaker 1: 45:48

It has to. Yeah, the transition has to make sense and in a time and space you say this is decades work, first of all to get here and second of all, to get beyond, and it wouldn't have even been possible to have these policies, or the policies would have been possible but not effective, if it wasn't for the digital transformation we've seen in currencies and in payments, because the leakage, like the transmission lines weren't even there, let alone reaching every village. The transmission lines weren't even there, let alone reaching every village and, of course, not every village, but every person. But you can, like most of the rubies can end up in a pocket if you come up with a policy that does that and this digital transformation, how important has that been as well?

Speaker 1: 46:25

Like digital media, you mentioned WhatsApp, which luckily you don't have to pay for. I mean you pay for it in different ways because definitely we are the product if you don't pay for, I mean you pay for in different ways because definitely we are the product if you don't pay for it. But let's say it's been a a good thing, especially in farmer communication. Like you're in every pocket, you can send photos, videos, audio messages and and really help, way help so many people as a help desk? What other digital media tools have you been using to scale the education piece?

Speaker 2: 46:50

basically, social media has played a very vital role and today most of the rural folks that we work with, including farmers even including farmers who are beyond 50 or 60 years of age have started using smartphones. This particularly boomed after the COVID pandemic. During the pandemic period, because of the lack of access for people to meet together and share information and updates what's happening in the district or in their country or in their state, people started switching to a little more technology-based information system, where a significant percentage of the population have shifted to smartphone usage, which means that if you have a strong, compelling message, you can actually enter their house within a minute. So this ability actually transformed the ability of our team to give good quality content. So we started hiring very good quality directors, cameramen and bringing good quality video shoots so that when we make a small film that will give the success story to a farmer, we are able to deliver it at high quality in their hand through smartphone.

Speaker 2: 48:06

So we have a 300,000 plus subscriber base in our YouTube, we have a few 100,000 on our Facebook and we have more than 100,000 farmers in our WhatsApp groups and we have hired specific WhatsApp managers who every day, morning to evening, look at how many questions have come, raise a ticket for each question and follow up until the answer has been given back to the farmer. So this sort of an operation enabling the digital platforms has really made us succeed to scale our operations to thousands of farmers. It can be further enhanced. We are looking at softwares which will help disseminate WhatsApp messages much more effortlessly. So all these things are in pipeline up messages much more effortlessly.

Speaker 1: 48:56

Uh, so all these things are in pipeline, yeah, and I'm imagining not to go into the ai conversation necessarily, but, um you, there are a lot of ways, especially in a technology country like, like india, that you're looking at this. How to automate or how to learn from all these questions and all these answers and um to, to almost train an AI agronomist or, like an AI help agronomist, or somehow figure out ways to use all the data, all the pictures, all that info you have from certain contexts and districts to, yeah, that's the ultimate data we need and want, especially if you start connecting into soil data, et cetera. Ai of remote sensing you have a very interesting body of research almost there to work on for a nice large language model.

Speaker 2: 49:37

Actually, we had internal debate within our team should we get into this AI way of looking at answering these questions and bringing more efficiency and reducing the manpower who are actually handling each question manually? Then what we found is that the farmers at least in South of India, they still prefer a very personal connect. They are still not appreciating even a small IVR choice of press 1 to talk to this person, press 2 to talk to this person. They are not really keen to even use this facility. Probably the next generation of farmers who will come in they will appreciate the AI technology and so on, but nevertheless our team is trying to find out these kind of tools and technologies which will keep us prepared. If farmers are ready, we should be able to transition our information and our repository of all these problems and solutions into a kind of how do you say information database that will help us transmit it effortlessly.

Speaker 1: 50:36

Yeah, I think there are many, but probably two big parts. One, of course, is the farmer-facing like how do you scale this across millions of WhatsApp users? That's one. But the other one is, like, how do you make sure that there's knowledge and there are answers from farmers as well, Like, did it work or not in this context, with rain coming in, et cetera, how that and that sounds like a perfect data problem for this to work. And it doesn't mean that then the large language model or the agent AI agent should also talk to the farmer.

Speaker 1: 51:02

That's probably a separate discussion, but we often joke, I think, in the technology world as well. Like we have very little data about farm on farm level, very little real like almost everything is on a model basis, which is not very useful. Like, we need to know actually, okay, this practice, combined with this repellent, combined with did actually do something or not? And if you then can combine it with, of course, nutrient levels and other research, and also cheap soil mentors, cheap sensors and, of course, remote sensing, you can get a much better picture of, okay, this whole region is in transition, not on a farm level, but even on.

Speaker 1: 51:36

Okay, where are big leakages or not? Where is it actually being, especially if you start having to document on policy levels. Okay, is this working in this region or not? I can just see, and you've been collecting that but I can imagine you have people not necessarily wanting to talk to an AI agent necessarily to get their farming advice, but I see people like John Kempf and others experimenting with AI agronomists. How do you scale the education or at least do more with the knowledge? Maybe there are so many interesting solutions hidden in the data you already have that even the best agronomists couldn't come. Yeah, we're not that good in connecting 200 million different data points.

Speaker 2: 52:17

Let's say we had an interesting debate during my COP visit in Azerbaijan, where a series of technologists were presenting different AI tools and machine learning tools to predict weather, to predict how much water that the plant requires, nutrition it requires, and so on.

Speaker 2: 52:35

It was very interesting and very much need of the hour.

Speaker 2: 52:38

But the problem that I was seeing and I was voicing which most people were acknowledging, but they said that we don't, they don't have a solution is every individual company is trying to build their own solution and because there are hundreds and thousands of companies across the globe, nobody is able to actually provide scale. And because they're not able to provide scale, the solution is so expensive that today a poor farmer can't afford it. Probably a rich farmer who's owning probably a few hundred hectares of land or thousand hectares of land, he might be able to access this technology and it will be viable for him. But for a poor farmer especially in the global south context where the average landholding will be a hectare or less, for them to access to this kind of technology, unless one solution provider approved by the government or something else, that comes and actually scales the technology, then the product launch and the economy what to say? The economy of scale doesn't kick in. So and this is one of the biggest challenges that I'm seeing is preventing this technology to actually reach the grassroots.

Speaker 1: 53:42

And I think, coming back to a point you made earlier, does it help the farmer to develop their sense of observation or does it distance them again, or does distances in general, because suddenly we trust an AI agent to make decisions for us, to give us. Like, how do we make sure this helps a farmer in their journey of actually observing their land and making decisions based on that, maybe helped by technology, but not completely driven by technology?

Speaker 2: 54:09

My personal view on this is that definitely the skill of observation will not be lost because the fundamental input that he has to give to the crop he only decides. Ai cannot decide it. Ai can give information that will help him make the decision. That is one thing. Second thing is that the farming that was happening in the last 50-60 years is not the same anymore.

Speaker 2: 54:33

For example, in India, the climate disasters or climate risks used to happen once in 8-12 years, not less than that. Now it is happening every alternate year. The rainfall has become erratic. The rainfall that used to happen over a period of 120 to 150 days is coming down in less than 30 days. So the heavy downpour is carrying away the soil. The heavy downpour is causing soil erosion and larger spells of drought is making lack of water availability to cultivate the land throughout the year.

Speaker 2: 55:06

So these kind of challenges have forced farmer to embrace technology. We need technology because a weather forecast can help a farmer to decide. I will not sow anything now because we are expecting a storm, probably by next week. So these kind of intel is very much needed for the farmer and there has to be a handholding and an education program that can onboard the farmers to these kind of technologies, because today the technology is in such a way even students who are well-educated are finding it difficult to grasp and use this technology. Where can we expect a poor farmer, an illiterate farmer, to use that? So a lot of transformation of this technology to local languages and more simpler user interface are also required to embrace the current situation of farmers in the country.

Speaker 1: 56:13

And let's because we mentioned it at the beginning as well you have a lot of farmers as well in tree-based programs and I think you mentioned something in the prequel about harvesting the clouds, which got my interest, obviously and permanent crops. How important have trees been and how have you been incorporating them into the trainings and into the agriculture systems that you have assisted farmers into, to apply or to put into practice?

Speaker 2: 56:43

When I joined this program in 2004, I read a very nice article that was published in the local tamil magazine and one of the scientists he took some experts of some other published document and he said that if one beyond one third of the human skin is destroyed because of, say, a disease or a burning accident or whatever, we lose our human life. I didn't know that until then. If you lose one third of your skin to a disease or for a or a fire accident or something, actually you'll die. Similarly, he was saying that a scientist has diagnosed this and said that on the terrestrial planet, if one third of permanent green cover is not maintained, the planet is in the direction of death. So in that context, as per United Nations recommendations, any nation should have a minimum of 33% permanent green cover to have the optimum climate, to have the optimum rainfall in the what is a periodicity and the frequency in which it needs to happen so that it is life sustaining and not life destructive. So in this context, to bring back 33% is a very important agenda for the entire nation. The Ministry of Environment and Forests Government of India's top objective is to bring back 33% green cover across the entire nation. So in this way. What we see is that more than 73% of the landscape in southern India is held by private farmers. It is not in the hands of the government. The government has around 23% of forest coverage, which means that a minimum of additional 10 or 15%, depending upon the health of these forests, whether they are degraded or denuded. Based on that, we'll have to see how to increase the permanent green car in private farmlands and if we have to do this, unless there is a profitable model, a farmer is not going to plant a tree which is going to just give shade and more oxygen and preventing more soil erosion. He's not going to do that. Shade and more oxygen and preventing more soil erosion, he's not going to do that. He's going to plant a tree which can either give him a good fruit which he can eat and sell in the market, or it can give good timber which is marketable in the local markets, or it should give fodder that he can feed the cattle, or aromatic substances that are needed for health industry and pharmaceutical industry, and so on. So there has to be a certain utility that the farmer can regularly harvest from these trees for him to be able to plant these trees on the ground. So one we have seen that we cannot increase the forest reserves in the country because of the pressure of population on the limited land that we have. So the only solution and pragmatic solution we have is tree-based agriculture.

Speaker 2: 59:28

When we say trees, trees cannot be taken away from crops. This is one mischief that the green revolution has done in India that when they came in they said that trees in the boundaries of the land has to be removed, otherwise they'll absorb all the fertilizers that is being fed to the crops. Because of this, a great chunk of our trees on private lands have been removed since 1960s and today, if you go into any farmland in most of India, you will not see much trees in the farmland. So all we are trying to do is do what probably four or five generations behind our forefathers did. Generations behind our forefathers did bring back 15% or 20% of their land into permanent shade by planting trees. That will benefit the farmers and allow farmers and teach farmers how to grow crops in between these rows of trees, which is exactly what is called as intercropping. If we promote intercropping and if we promote a tree-based agriculture, we will not just fix the climate, we will also ensure the farmer's livelihood because trees are more resilient towards climate risks and they will be able to provide the livelihood even if there is a crop failure. So it becomes an alternative source of livelihood. Even if there is a storm, the chances of trees surviving over crops is much higher. So the fruits from the trees or the timber from the tree becomes a additional income and an asset or in wealth to these farmers.

Speaker 2: 1:00:51

So we designed this program as a life insurance scheme. When we went to farmers, I simply asked them see, my friend has got a bank job and the first advice from his parents is that take 20% of your monthly salary and put it into a savings account. And they used to do this. And why they do it? Because suddenly there is an emergency in the family. They can pull out this money for a rainy day.

Speaker 2: 1:01:16

But today I ask these farmers what do you guys have as a backup when there is a medical emergency in the family or you want to send your children for higher education? What is that cash solution that you have? They have nothing. Their cropping cycle is in such a way that, whatever they harvest, they sell it and they use that to buy seeds and fertilizers for the next cropping season. They don't really save any money, they're just living on the land. So in this context, we promoted the idea of tree-based agriculture as a life insurance, where farmers will allocate 20% of their they forego 20% of their land to trees and the trees will start giving yield over a period of 10 years or 15 years or 20 years, in the form of fruit, fodder and timber. So this has been very welcoming. We started with a few hundred farmers in one district. Today we are able to plant around 12 million trees, with 30,000 farmers every year, and, as far as I have heard about it, this is one of the largest tree-based agriculture program which is farmer-driven.

Speaker 1: 1:02:24

And where does the comment come from? Harvesting the clouds? Like have you seen influence on weather patterns, on rain patterns and things like that from this massive scale? This is probably one of the larger, if not the largest, tree planting or productive tree planting systems in the world. Like how have you seen the impact on the larger ecosystem beyond the two hectare to one hectare farms that implement this?

Speaker 2: 1:02:52

I grew up in a township called Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited. It's an industrial township and it's a very large area, probably a few hundred hectares of land. Everywhere there were trees and when we used to come from long journeys, when we come during the rainy days we see that the rain has fallen only on the township area because of the density of the trees. Just like 500 metres before my township there is no rainfall. 500 metres after my township there is no rainfall. So I used to always be amazed how this happens.

Speaker 2: 1:03:25

When I met Dr Namalwar he used to be our mentor in agriculture Then he said he took some studies and he explained that just 100 hectares of contiguous patch of forest or tree cover can actually harvest the clouds, the organic matter that evaporates along with vapor and they goes up.

Speaker 2: 1:03:44

There is an ionic exchange, electrical charge that is an exchange action.

Speaker 2: 1:03:48

I'm not very technical on this, but I just know this much that there is an electrical exchange, ionic exchange that happens in the clouds, which harvests the clouds and brings the rain to that forest or that tree cover area.

Speaker 2: 1:04:00

So this has been studied by the kings in the native periods in India where they created sacred groves in rain shadow regions. There are rain shadow regions where the clouds will come and pass by, but they will not rain in that particular area. And these kings have created sacred groves, approximately in the area of 100 hectares or 150 hectares, and nobody is allowed to cut these trees or harvest these trees. These trees are meant for the well-being of the entire community. There were temples built around the sacred groves so that people come and worship it and they don't destroy this forest, and so on and so forth. There was an entire culture built behind the mechanism of harvesting clouds, and there are ancient Tamil literature which talks about these sciences and systems of water conservation and bringing rain to region where they really needed. It are some examples where it is a proof that if you plant enough number of trees, you can bring your clouds down.

Speaker 1: 1:05:05

We can spend another few hours just on that. I think it's such an important notion and such a almost like keystone species a role that we can play in re-establishing this or or bringing it back, or bringing it in general, like we don't know when they were there, um, but being able to bring harvesting the clouds or bringing rain back to places, or to places where it's desperately needed, might be one of the coolest and most important jobs over the next decades, as we go into extreme climate weirding, which obviously is already happening.

Speaker 2: 1:05:47

And actually much later, when I was reading the principles of permaculture, uh, in that Bill Mollison has written that, uh, there is a concept of Ekman spiral. The wind that is carrying the cloud that is coming across a group of trees, a particular section of trees, the wind actually makes a spiral pattern and that spiral pattern actually worlds and makes the clouds. The clouds come down. There is also a scientific study and there is a principle called Ekman spiral, which I learned much later after knowing I was thinking that this is only traditional knowledge and this has not been documented scientifically. But there have been scientific documentation of this process and it's very much a possibility, especially in regions where desertification has created havoc in bringing poor rain to agriculture communities, bringing back tree cover in concentrated pockets can actually help them bring back their water systems.

Speaker 1: 1:06:43

Yeah, and we've seen, we've done quite a few conversations around like restoring small water cycles, and there's a lot of work being done in spain, work like um research. Uh, dr mian mian, the late dr mian mian um, has done a lot of that on on behalf of the european commission. I think in california, like especially systems that are land that is relatively close to a big water body, like 100, 260 or 200 kilometers away, there are studies like what is needed, like the clouds still come in from the sea or from the big water body but they just don't rain down. Like what is needed to trigger that. Is that 100 kilometers, 100 hectares? Like what is needed? What kind of trees?

Speaker 1: 1:07:24

I think are interesting questions to ask how dense, how healthy, like it's a healthy forest that needs to do that. It cannot be a monoculture, eucalyptus plantation, probably. But what is needed to trigger to harvest the clouds? But I just the concept of harvesting the clouds is such a strong, like phonetics is also important, like what words, linguistics, like what words we use here, because probably restoring small water cycles is going to get less people excited than harvesting the clouds. So it's important to use that and to really look at that, like this is. We've interrupted these and that begs the question. If we know why they're no longer there, begs the question what can be done and how much do we have to do and where to restore and to start harvesting and increase that flow? And I think it's a powerful, scary and interesting way, but of course it has been in traditional indigenous knowledge in many, many places for a long time. We just chose to ignore that for a while, but I think there is a lot of study to it from the biotic pump, from a lot of in Brazil. There's quite a bit of research into that as well.

Speaker 1: 1:08:22

But I still see it very neglected. Like in, let's say, investors or entrepreneurs and food companies in agriculture, even in region ag, we sort of don't dare to think that big, like we can bring back rain, like Ooh, that sounds so sci-fi, like let's not touch that. But we have to think at that level, we have to think at that scale to get other actors involved as well and to get other um and to have the impact we want. Otherwise, again, we're a little piece of paradise, great. But if you can not influence the rain, we're sort of lost.

Speaker 1: 1:08:52

And to shift gears a bit and to ask a few questions we always love to ask. Actually, maybe that's the message, but I will let you fill in that message. Let's say we do this in front of a live audience, I like to say in a theater in your local capital, on, let's say, the financial heart of the region, and we have an audience full of financial types I'm using this positively that are in control of resources, that might want to put money to work. They might want to invest either their own or other people's money. What would be, after a fascinating evening, of course, with a lot of interesting videos and photos and a great meal, what would be the one message you would like them to remember the next day, if they're ready to receive it, that they might get to work with? Because, of course, we know people forget. They get easily enthusiastically excited about something, but then the next day, when they're back to work, at their desk or wherever, what is the one seed you would like to plant in, let's say, a room full of financially focused types?

Speaker 2: 1:09:49

It was interesting that you were using the terminology investment, but when these people who are actually having the big pockets, they see it as expenditure. So just being able to transmit a message that this is a long-term investment for your children and your grandchildren, it's not philanthropy, it's not charity, it is not expenditure, it is an investment for you to be able to protect the current natural resources so that you can give a livable planet to your next generation, will be the key seed that I would like to plant. Because today, whenever we go and raise money for such interventions, they see that what do I get out of it? I mean they're looking at by the end of this financial, what do I get out of it by the end of next financial year? What can I get out of it?

Speaker 2: 1:10:32

Especially, when I ask money for tree planting, they say that OK, but it comes over a period of 10, 15 years. I don't know whether I'll be there in my job to know, to see the impact of it. So the very short-sightedness of natural ecosystems and how they function, and considering that we have destroyed it over the last 200 years, repairing it, they're thinking that it can be done in one year or two years. That is really funny. Even though a lot of educated people are around, I would nuance my communication, of course. I won't be so brutal with them.

Speaker 2: 1:11:03

I will you can a lot of pleasantries and so on, but the fundamental message is that to look at it as an investment for their own businesses. For example, you're an agriculture business owner who's having millions of dollars of business. How are you going to run your empire when there is no soil to till when there are no farmers to cultivate? What will you do business with soil to till where there are no farmers to cultivate? What will you do business with?

Speaker 2: 1:11:32

So, even from a very selfish point of view, if I were to say if I am a big investor and I have billions of dollars of money and I want to secure that billions of dollars over a period of next 100 years, I want to see where will I invest it so that I can continue my business in the same geography, with the same communities, and so on, so forth.

Speaker 2: 1:11:46

Whether it is a selfish motive or with a long vision, either ways, we have to see this as investment and not as expenditure. Which brings me to the saddened part that at the end of the COP summit, we were able to just strike $300 billion for climate change worldwide to be spent on fixing or mitigating the problems that we have created, and less than 4% of this is being given to agriculture and food systems and within that 4% if we see less than 1.2% is actually reaching the small and marginalized farmers. And small and marginalized farmers constitute 70% of the farmers across the globe, producing 40% of the food in the globe. So if we are really serious about bringing back what we have done in the last 200 years of industrial revolution, only nature-based solutions has the potential and capability of bringing back the atmospheric carbon dioxide into the soil and store it permanently through regenerative practices of agriculture or tree-based farming.

Speaker 1: 1:12:52

And that begs the question or it's a nice, it's not nice, but it's a nice bridge to. What would you do if you would be in charge of, let's say, a billion dollars or a billion euros or the currency you choose? But let's say an almost unfathomable? It's nothing and it's a lot at the same time. I hope nobody, like I wish nobody, has a concentration of wealth. But let's say it is Tomorrow morning.

Speaker 1: 1:13:14

You woke up and that's the case, and you had to put it to work, and I think that the fundamental point you make of investing is so crucial and that's where, you see, probably the policy started to change because the current system is failing and you see it as a um, as a way of insurance or as a way of, the only way of, of the sense of urgency is very strong. But what if you had that opportunity to put that amount of money to work? Not looking for investment advice we don't do that here, um, but I'm looking for priorities like what are your top uh places to to get to work and to put money to work of this size.

Speaker 2: 1:13:50

Ankur Kotwaldaalasanaa Very tricky question, but there won't be one strategy. I would split the billion dollars which will? Henry Suryawirawanacca Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 1:13:53

Portfolio approach. We are all for it, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:13:56

Ankur Kotwaldaalasanaa so one part will be definitely to focus on policy change and have a strong team which is lobbying for positive policy change. Today there is a strong lobby to sell bombs and missiles and, what to say, life-negative substances in the world, but there is no money to actually lobby for good, for something positive, something that is regenerative. So I would spend a significant percentage of this money on creating a lobby network and a policymaker network which will help seed the solution and help bring the necessary policy change. Another section I will build capabilities on the ground at a decentralized level. For example, if I'm a government officer, say at the state level, I want to do this regenerative program.

Speaker 2: 1:14:42

What is my fundamental requirement? I want successful models at every village level. Each village. Say. There are 500 farmers in a village, there should be at least five farmers who are testaments and testimonials of successful growing of all the major crops in that village. If they grow five major crops, for each crop I should have one model farmer who's able to demonstrate I can grow this successfully without the usage of synthetics and other things. So to build this islands of resilience in the form of model farmers at a decentralized level, with whatever money I have. This will be the second set of objective that I will do to ensure that, when the necessary policy change happens, the seeds of transformations are in the form of model farmers who have done this for 5, 6, 7 or 10 years and that will be the tool of transformation. When the government wants to really bring their real budgets, which will be in multiples of billions of dollars, there should be proof of concept at a decentralized level for them to scale it.

Speaker 1: 1:15:43

Yeah, it's such a good point. We ask this question and many people go like, oh, it's such a good point, we asked this question and many people go like, oh, that's so much money. But I don't think that's the point here. The point is we're going to get those questions either from, depending on the context, from government okay, I have a project of 10 billion or insurance, or in large institutions and unless we have proof points, unless we have quote, unquote the infrastructure to put that to work, and say, okay, we go from five farmers to 50 and then to 500 and 5000 and we know how to do it, like it's not, it takes a few years. This is the amount of seedlings we need, this amount of trees we need, this amount of handholding we need and this amount of technology we need in the background, etc. Unless we have that, that, that energy is that energy, money energy is going to go somewhere else. It needs the root system to get to work.

Speaker 2: 1:16:27

I forgot to mention the third strategy. Probably the third strategy in the kitty, which probably will take a certain amount of financing, is consumer awareness. Consumers have been made to adopt to Coca-Cola drinking just with advertisements and repeated communication. I would say that we need strong communication through the health ministries or through health experts on the importance of eating healthy foods. Your medical bills, your medical insurance can actually come down if you actually need a healthy life. For living a healthy life, you need a healthy food. For healthy food, you need a healthy soil. For healthy soil, you need regenerative practices. So bringing the producer, who's the farmer, and the consumer, who's the person who's eating the food.

Speaker 2: 1:17:14

There is absolute disconnect today. Strategic, uh, how do you say? Um communication mediums through which we can bring the importance, because whatever the market demands, the farmer are ready to produce. That is as simple as that. How do you create the demand? Through awareness and enough, uh, education. So I would say that one third I'll put it into policy and high level lobby and probably with the uh, with the government and the political leadership and various other people, and one-third I will put it into actual on-ground work to create models. And one-third I will use it for creating the behavior change through consumer awareness.

Speaker 1: 1:18:00

And a question we love to ask, inspired by John Kemp what do you believe to be true about regenerative agriculture that others don't?

Speaker 2: 1:18:09

The biggest myth, at least in India, is that they feel that regenerative agriculture cannot feed the nation. It is a good hobby for people who already have the money to produce organics for themselves, for their family and so on, but it cannot feed the nation. Like you started basically yeah, yeah, so uh, proving that yield can be achieved In fact, more yield than conventional farming can be achieved in regenerative systems is one key thing that I feel is true, which is not communicated well. The second thing is that people think regenerative farming is not profitable and it takes forever for the soil to transition. In fact, in our experience, the soil takes less than a year to transition. The human being takes more than three years to transition. So it is not the question of the technology or whatever it is. It is the ability for us to get the observation skill and our act together to do the right things.

Speaker 1: 1:19:07

Such a strong point and, as a final one, I want to be conscious of your time as well. If you had a magic wand and you could change one thing overnight, I have an idea what you might say, but maybe it goes somewhere completely different. So if you had that power and most people go to what if I do two or three things? Now one thing, which, of course, in a complex system is super difficult because everything is connected, but what would be your top priority if you could change one thing overnight?

Speaker 2: 1:19:32

this is not an original idea. This is an inspiration from Sadhguru that the one thing that could happen is bring the entire humanity in a very conscious manner. Once consciousness kicks in, you don't have to tell them to plant trees or don't eat or don't do that. Conscious people will be able to take conscious decisions which are always life positive and it's not life negative. So if I have a wand and if I can make the entire human mankind conscious, I think that will be the greatest gift to the planet and it will bring the necessary strength and the resilience for us to undo whatever damage that has happened in the world. And if the magic wand can go back and repair damages, then probably the consciousness can happen, probably 200 years back when we started industrializing almost everything that we're doing today.

Speaker 1: 1:20:24

And.

Speaker 2: 1:20:24

I think.

Speaker 1: 1:20:25

with that, it's a perfect way of wrapping up. I want to thank you so much for coming on here and share your journey and share the work you've been doing obviously standing on the shoulders of giants and I want to thank you for the work you do and taking the time out of a very busy schedule to come on our podcast. So thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 1:20:44

Not at all. It was my pleasure, in fact, a lot of these ideas, which are like deep seated, which doesn't find expression on a day-to-day basis, with these kind of thought-provoking questions that you're able to ask in a very pointed manner, it helped me bring all these things very alive within me. So it is not just about me talking something. It is actually inspiring myself that so many things need to be done and we have a long way to go, and I thank you for this opportunity.

Speaker 1: 1:21:10

We've come a long way as well. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 1:21:13

Thank you, Cohen.

Speaker 1: 1:21:19

Thank you for listening all the way to the end. For show notes and links discussed, check out our website investinginregenerativeagriculturecom slash posts. If you liked this episode, why not share it with a friend and get in touch with us on social media, our website or via the Spotify app, and tell us what you liked most and give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or your podcast player. That really really helps us. Thanks again and see you next time.