59-Year-Old Himachali Farmer Is Preserving Traditional Farming Methods

What started as a side job turned into a full-time job that resulted in the preservation of approximately three dozen indigenous seed varieties. Villagers affectionately refer to him as a "saviour" of indigenous seeds since he has adopted the Nau-anaj practise, an intercropping technique in which nine different food grains are grown on the same plot of land.

Sharma uses the indigenous seeds that his elders have passed on to him to raise nine crops, a mix of cereals, creepers, lentils, legumes, and vegetables. Beans, buckwheat, foxtail millet, maize, moong, amaranthus rajma, and urad dal are among the crops he raises.

According to him, a person can cultivate 18 crops in a year (9 Kharif and 9 Rabi), which has many advantages such as improving soil fertility while using less water and having no input expenditures.

The 59-year-old farmer remembers being 25 years old when a widespread campaign to rescue woodlands began. He claims that as his elders complained about how the local seeds were steadily vanishing from the market, he began to reflect. After doing some investigation, he discovered that these seeds were more nutritious than the ones that were readily available and being used by all the farmers.