In the sun-baked fields of Paras Rampur village, nestled in Hariharpur Rani block of Shravasti district, Uttar Pradesh, lives Kamla Devi. Her world is a tiny mud-brick home shared with her husband, three young children, and widowed mother-in-law, their lifeline a few acres of land, yielding just enough for them to live on. We were there with a delegation of international forestry specialists and agronomists to attend a Food Festival last month, an event that represented a first-of-its-kind grassroots movement of thousands of women like Kamla Devi.
At the Food Festival, Kamla Devi confidently invited us to her stall, proffering carrots and radish from her plot alongside identical varieties from the local market. We tasted both, and the unanimous verdict was that her farm vegetables were far more tasty and vibrant in colour. She beamed as she attributed the quality of her vegetables to the new method of agriculture she had learnt and was deploying in her Good Food Corner (GFC). “I cannot explain to you the entire science of this agriculture, but what I do know is that these vegetables are very tasty. Never before have the plates of my family members come back so clean. This agriculture must reach every farmer, every mother in India.” As she joined her hands to thank us, I could sense that we are on the cusp of what could be Green Revolution 2.0.
Kamla Devi is one of 175,000 women empowered through the GFC movement introduced by the Hyderabad-based Naandi Foundation. Spanning Punjab's Muktsar and Tarn Taran districts, Uttar Pradesh's Shravasti, Andhra Pradesh's Alluri Sitharama Raju, and Maharashtra's Wardha, women are trained to establish and manage their own GFCs. These are small plots of homestead land, sometimes just 20 feet by 20 feet, in which women of farmer families grow as many as 27 varieties of vegetables through the year, entirely chemical-free. The training on vegetable cultivation is based on proven biology-based agriculture science, and they receive quality seeds, bio-inputs including high carbon compost and on-field advisories. Women learn to prepare vegetable beds, treat seeds with nutrient-enhancing inputs, establish mini-nurseries for seedlings, and plant seeds and according to seasonal cropping calendars. Multi-cropping using alternative raised and sunken beds, companion cropping which enable simultaneous standing crops to support each other, (eg marigolds repelling pests from tomatoes), and sequential planting, are some of the basic tents of this organic regenerative agriculture science. There are at least two or three types of vegetable ready for harvest at any point in the season, making it possible for their families to eat fresh, nutritious, zero-chemical vegetables every day of the year. Naandi's internal evaluations reveal transformative yields: 30-50% boosts per bigha over chemical monocrops, with zero synthetic pesticides. This defies conventional wisdom, as vegetables like carrots and greens typically suffer 20-25% losses to pests and diseases in India (ICAR Indian Horticultural Database, 2025).
The Food Festival is an annual celebration of all the work done at the GFCs all year. At this event the best performing women farmers of the year received awards. The award winners included those who had been most diligent in following organic regenerative agriculture practices, those who had the highest yield per vegetable type, those who had zero pest and/or disease issues with their vegetable crops, and those who had done the best seed-collection for deploying in the next season. A few star farmers have the opportunity of displaying their results in dedicated stalls. It was in one such stall that we had met Kamla Devi. In other stalls, there were displays of agriculture almanacs, mini GFC models made by the women farmers depicting different designs of soil beds and crop rows, there were demonstrations of different regenerative agriculture practices such as mulching and spraying of bioinoculants, with women explaining how each practice helps the health of soil and crop. The entire Festival concluded with a communal meal, cooked using vegetables from GFCs.
GFCs are today billboards highlighting the role of women in agriculture, moving away from their hitherto invisible presence – silently performing a wide range of farmland tasks from sowing, to transplanting to weeding to harvesting, Women comprise 75% of India's agricultural workforce (NSSO 77th Round, 2023), yet they control under 13% of farmland ownership (FAO Gender and Land Rights Database, 2024) and earn very little — often less than ₹50 daily in rainfed areas like Shravasti, where poverty rates exceed 40% (NITI Aayog Multidimensional Poverty Index, 2023).
The GFC movement has made the women of farmer families not just food producers, but leaders of a nutrition revolution at home. They have become powerful influencers on the ground (not on social media!), engaging men into conversations about transitioning mainstream chemical-dependent agriculture to regenerative agriculture methods. These women not only have the best food, widest variety of vegetables, and a steady supply round the year, they also sold the surplus or bartered it with neighbours. They are now ready to become orchard owners.
The GFC movement has shown us that smallholder farmers can be profitable, that vegetables generally known to be heavily dependent on chemical inputs, can be equally grown without them, that women can become entrepreneurs, that small holder farmer families can take up horticulture and have a portfolio of diverse crops, and that all of this is climate resilient, and immune to geopolitical events.
India's smallholders—86% of farmers tilling under two hectares (Agriculture Census 2022)—face existential threats: climate volatility (monsoon failures cut vegetable output 10-15% in 2022-24 per MoA data), geopolitical shocks (Ukraine war spiked fertiliser costs 50%), and soil degradation (60% of farmland nutrient-depleted, ICRIER 2024). Vegetables, prized for nutrition, are chemical intensive—India sprays 50,000 tonnes annually, contaminating water and health (PPV&FR Authority). GFCs stand out as harbingers of change, of a path towards agriculture that is climate resilient, immune to geopolitical events, and empowers the farmer family.
The GFC movement showcases the power and feasibility of regenerative agriculture science by democratising the knowledge amongst close to 200,000 almost unschooled women. It is a harbinger for change – not only bringing women farmers to the forefront, but also a new way of looking at the idea of a farmer, as an entrepreneur. This tiny plots of land, the GFCs are actually the prototype for entrepreneurship in agriculture.
2026 is the International Year of the Woman Farmer. It is a recognition long overdue. Despite their 60-80% labour share (ILO India Wage Report, 2024), women lack credit access (only 15% of formal farm loans per RBI data), training, and recognition. Cultural norms relegate them to "family help," stifling entrepreneurship. The GFC movement has brought about three vital changes. First, economic agency. These women sell surpluses or barter them with neighbours. Second, nutrition leadership. Their diverse harvests combat India's crises: 35.3% of women aged 15-49 are anaemic, 36% of children under five are stunted, and micronutrient gaps persist despite caloric sufficiency (NFHS-5, 2021). GFC families report doubled vegetable intake, eliminating hidden hunger. Third, on-ground influence. These influencers--not on social media but on soil --sway chemical-dependent kin towards regenerative agriculture for the mainstream staple crops. Kamla Devi could well be the mascot of all that the International Year of the Woman Farmer stands for. She and her compatriots have the recipe not just for nutritious carrots, but for a food system that India can depend upon, for food, nutrition and ecological security.
This article is authored by Manoj Kumar, CEO, Naandi Foundation and co-founder, Araku Coffee, Hyderabad.