The Better India · 14 hours ago

I Grow Black Wheat, ‘Sarpagandha’ on My Unique Organic Farm

When Reeva Sood's husband was diagnosed with cancer in 2012, the couple began asking hard questions about how they had been living - and what they were willing to change. What followed was the slow transformation of 30 barren acres in Himachal Pradesh into an organic farm growing black wheat, medicinal herbs, and dragon fruit, tended by 10 full-time farmers and anchored by Him2Hum, a producer company now involving 230 village women. Reeva's measure of success has little to do with yield or profit margins: "The day one of the women can stand in front of a buyer in the big mandi and talk to them without anyone's support, that for me is a better India." Even abandoned cows found a place in her vision - their dung feeding the vermicompost pits, their presence a reminder, as Reeva puts it, "that even when something is abandoned, it can be useful if used well." The farm grew, but what it was really cultivating all along was the quiet, durable confidence of women who had never before held a pan card or signed their name to anything.