Housewife Transforms Her Family's

Farming by no means is an easy task. So, farming organically becomes a much more difficult task. But Tamil Nadu’s P Buvaneshwari has tamed this herculean task by converting a 10-acre chemical farm into an organic farm.

Buvaneshwari was born into a farming family in Kalyana Odai village, Thanjavur district, Tamil Nadu. She grew up amid nature with easy access to various fruits and vegetables. This intimacy with nature had inspired her in farming and sprouted the desire for organic farming in her.

After marriage, Buvaneshwari did some small-scale kitchen gardening and growing flowers in her backyard. She observed how her in-laws did farming on their 10-acre farm. The whole 10-acre was utilizing artificial fertilizers and chemical pesticides. Buvaneshwari convinced her in-laws to give her 1.5-acre vacant land of the 10-acre farm to experiment with organic farming. Nobody, including agricultural laborers, had any faith in her.

Buvaneshwari began experimenting in 2013 and now the whole 10-acres of farmland is free of harmful chemicals and pesticides. Buvaneshwari now has succeeded in growing crops organically in the entire 10-acre farm.

If the soil and crops which have been accustomed to chemicals suddenly stop receiving them, the effects would be negative and the yield will suffer, Buvaneshwari says. But they were able to make the transition because of her background, habits and information gathered over the years. At first, the crops suffered, but Buvaneshwari refused to give up. She used cow dung, cow urine, sugarcane mulch and other natural fertilizer on her land. Natural pesticides like neem leaf oil, pest-repelling plants etc were used. She also used intercropping to develop vegetables like green chillies, tomato, eggplant and snake gourd as well as leguminous crops like moong dal and urad dal.

Buvaneshwari’s initial goal along with organic farming was to bring back the traditional rice variants like Kichili samba, vadan samba, thulasi seeraga samba, sivappu kavuni (red rice), and karun kuruvai. Now she has succeeded in growing these rice varieties and sells them at a lower price than the market price.

She believes that if you want to get into farming, you should not be worried about the size of your property. She says, “Put your heart and soul into it, and even a tiny plot of land may yield harvests that will last for generations.”

-Poorna Krishnan