A conversation with the remarkable Narayan Reddy

In 2017, we were given the wonderful opportunity to spend the day with Narayan Reddy on his farm in Doddaballapur.
His achievements on his land, and his contributions to natural farming as a whole, are groundbreaking and important.

Over the past 22 years he has increased the humus content of his soil from 0.3% to 4.3%, while the neighbours lost 50% of theirs. His land is a forest garden, with hundreds of varieties of fruit, vegetables and grains. Each patch planned and carefully thought through, but also allowed to be. His farm supports him and his family, along with a couple of goats and cows, for all their needs. The family only has to buy tea, sugar, salt, soap and cloth (most of which are hand me downs), everything else they need comes from the farm.

As he walks through his land it is clear is at one with this complex network of relationships he has carefully cultivated over the years. Always interacting.
He knows every inch and can tell you in clear, logical arguments - inevitably backed up with precise numbers and figures - everything you want to know about soil, trees and what steps we need to take to live more harmoniously with the land and with each other.

The idea for this interview came from Myriam Shankar whose organisation TAICT runs waste management and land management programmes in the village of Tarahunise, Bangalore.
And the conversation between Myriam, Kiri and Mr. Reddy was captured by Aarthi Parthasarathy and Meghna Menon of Falana Films.