Greater Noida: Around 15-20 km from Noida lies Bhanauta, a village with 20 acres of arable land, which is slowly taking up organic farming. Almost half of the plantation area now has natural manure and pesticides.
With time, more villagers, or ‘progressive farmers’, are taking up organic farming. And some of the farms are even open to city residents who want to grow their own vegetables.
The experiment started in Bhanauta — a 30-minute drive from Noida — a few years ago with Greater Noida-based green activist Vikrant Tongad converting his own piece of land into an organic farm.
“I had started it as an experiment to see how natural manure, based on cow dung and pesticides made of herbs and neem, work. Slowly, people started taking interest and I started getting residents to come to the farm. It has now become a community farming hub. At least nine families source vegetables from this one farm and the family members also come and work on the farm themselves,” Tongad said.
“There is a nominal fee that they pay for renting the farm and hiring gardeners to do the heavy-lifting. Now, after the success of my farm, many others have started converting their plots into organic ones. We hope that the entire village will take up this model of growing healthy food,” he adds.
On the farm spread over four acres, tomatoes, cauliflower, radish, potatoes and spinach are grown.
At an adjacent plot, a “food forest” has been created with a mix fruits, flowers and vegetables.
Most of Bhanauta has a lot of construction now with only serpentine lanes left between houses to navigate one’s way.
“Most of the houses are expanding because families are growing. There are around 100 families in Bhanauta now. The total land in the village was around 100 acres, but it has shrunk over the years. The total arable land available in the villages is about 20 acres. So, as part of a conservation initiative and to develop community farming, we are propagating this idea,” Tongad said.
He added that traditional farmers take time to get convinced about the newer ways of doing things. “But we, the new generation of farmers, have taken this up as a method of progressive farming and many are now taking to the new ideas,” Tongad said.
Another farmer in Bhanauta, Sukhbir Tongad, has converted half-an-acre of his plot into an organic farm. “I started with a small slice of my agricultural land. Slowly and surely, more people are taking up organic farming in Bhanauta and we plan to convert the entire village land into an organic farmland. People from the younger generation are open to new experiments and it is working well,” Sukhbir said.
Vikrant Tongad said people come to Bhanauta from as far as Vasant Kunj in Delhi to see the farms and work in them. “Many also take part in sowing seeds, weeding and pruning process. They pick up whatever vegetables they need for the week from the farm before leaving. Fresh and healthy vegetables without pesticides is the reward for all the effort that they put in. It is a good way to get close to nature. Growing your own food is now a movement and we, as a village, are setting an example of that as environmentally conscious farmers,” he added.