Bharat Dogra & Baba Mayaram, Bhopal
In Dharaav village in Hoshangabad district of Madhya Pradesh (MP), tribal farmers practise a system of mixed cultivation that they call utera. Several cereals, millets and legumes are grown together in June. Ganpat, a 60-year-old farmer, says that they don’t need to spend any money at all to practise utera farming.
These farmers save seeds from the previous year’s crops. Farm animals fertilise the fields with manure while crop residues completely free of chemical poisons, provide nutritious food for. . .