Meet Our Famers
FARMERS ARE THE ROOTS OF ORGANIC INDIA
Farmers are the roots of ORGANIC INDIA. Our network includes thousands of family farmers and wild-crafters across India, each working to bring the ORGANIC INDIA mission to life.
Farms are a place of opportunity, community and shared purpose. Women in the field laugh and sing. Men raise their children to learn the ways of organic farming. Families farm together, growing food to eat as well as herbs to make a living. But our commitment goes beyond the farm to help enhance the lives of our farmers through fair-market wages, access to healthcare, empowerment and gender equality programs and infrastructure improvements. When farmers succeed, their villages also prosper, leading to a collective increase in quality of life.
We take great pride in providing training and educational opportunities to our farmers—many from marginalized groups including women, widows, the elderly and the illiterate—enabling self-sufficiency and developing skills to pass on to future generations. All of our farmers and tribal wild-crafters are educated in organic and biodynamic agricultural practices and we cover the fees associated with acquiring organic certifications. We then purchase the harvested crops and herbs at a premium market price, ensuring sustainable income for our farmers. Our relationships are built on mutual respect, dignity and interconnectedness.
By choosing ORGANIC INDIA, you become part of this intricate web of connectedness, empowering Indian farmers, protecting Mother Earth and promoting your own health and wellness.
Kailash Singh
Kailash Singh was ORGANIC INDIA’s first farmer partner.
When ORGANIC INDIA’s founders approached farmers with a proposal to convert to organic farming, they were met with deep skepticism — the “Green Revolution,” an attempt to industrialize India’s agriculture in the 1960s, had left rural communities and the environment in ruin. Farmers, driven into debt and poverty, had nothing but distrust for outside interventions.
Kailash Singh was the first farmer to partner with ORGANIC INDIA, with results so spectacular that other farmers asked to partner with ORGANIC INDIA the following year. When asked what changed his mind, one farmer replied, “I have seen the return of birds I haven’t seen since I was a child.”
Kanhaiya
Kanhaiya is the ORGANIC INDIA Brindavan Farm Manager. Before joining ORGANIC INDIA in 1999 he had been a committed spiritual student and practitioner. He says that in 1995, he learned of the spiritual sage H.W.L. Poonja, known as Papaji, in Lucknow and at the same time was told about a company run by a westerner, Bharat Mitra.
“After my father passed in 1999, I was inspired to have a meaningful life and came to Lucknow to meet Bharat Mitra. He immediately made me his farm manager and since then there has been no looking back,” he said. In the last 20 years, Kanhaiya has raised his family at the farm, “In the beautiful lap of nature. I am grateful to ORGANIC INDIA for transforming our lives.”
Kanhaiya added that he was privileged to serve his spiritual teacher. “I thank Papaji for giving me inner peace and joy,” he said.
Maya
Also known affectionately as “Chukti,” Maya is one of the ORGANIC INDIA “Rose Ladies,” a group of women who grow, care for, and harvest organic roses for ORGANIC INDIA Tulsi Sweet Rose Tea.
In her own words, “My work is to pluck rose leaves and flowers — I laugh with my co-workers and my day passes just like that — laughing. I feel good when I water and care for the plants and put leaves and grass into the compost. Since I have started working at Brindavan farm, there is no headache and no worries — as long as I am alive I will work here. My heart is healthy and at peace, and my message to the world is ‘Namaste’.”