From the ground up

“I wake up really early. I just always sound drowsy,” says Achintya Anand, when we shatter our own beauty sleep to call him in the morning to understand his journey into urban farming. Anand started Krishi Cress farms in 2014. “My dad owns a catering company and I thought I’d start with learning about restaurant management to help with the family business.

I didn’t like it, and so moved on to culinary school, before realising that I didn’t want to be on that side of the kitchen counter either,” recalls Anand. It was when someone suggested he try growing microgreens that third time proved the charm, and it stuck.

“We started with growing micro-greens in Delhi at a time where no one had even considered the feasibility, and it was largely for our own catering business. Then, as any successful farm that starts growing produce in excess, we started looking for outlets for the product,” explains the 28-year-old, noting that now, Krishi Cress is doing its own Kombucha mixes while still supplying homes and restaurants, given the bounty of the harvest.  

Over the 6.5 acres that currently constitute Krishi Cress farms in South Delhi, what started with microgreens has expanded to speciality vegetables, edible flowers, and even everyday produce, like cauliflower and carrots. “We definitely saw a huge surge in orders from homes since the lockdown, as everyone wants fresh produce sent to them directly,” he observes.

The farm caters to everyone from a home cook to professional chefs. “We make no distinctions; all our produce shown on our website is open to anyone to purchase. That being said, sometimes we have grown items that patrons have suggested, but those are more on a personal relationship basis than any commercial try-outs,” explains Anand, speaking about the farm’s formidable social media outreach.

“People have started talking about hydroponics and growing in greenhouses in Delhi, which doesn’t really make a lot of sense in terms of a better product,” says Anand, adding, “The air is the same outside as inside greenhouse, because the bandwidth required to filter that volume of air is unreal.” Instead, Anand and his team have learned, through trial and error, the best possible schedules of crop rotation to grow the best feasible produce.

“We don’t leave our fields lying fallow. During monsoon, we green-manure them with things like cabbage and peas that help enrich the nutrients in the soil, which is something we learned in school,” he says, pointing out that over its entire acreage and through the year, Krishi Cress grows between 100-130 different crops, which all form a micro ecosystem and grow in symbiosis.

Speaking of symbioses, the Delhi urban farming community has grown even as Anand’s once-upon-a-time microgreens project has. “I’m happy to have the network of professional chefs, private homes, and general culinary enthusiasts that have grown in tandem with the farm. Despite the growing demand for fresh, specialised produce, I have decided to not invest in up scaling as of now, given the current economic micro-climate, wherein everything is in flux. Once things settle down, look me up,” signs off the man with the green thumb.