From renting farms to joining collectives, take charge of what you eat

This symbiosis between city-dwellers and farmers, where both share the fruits and the responsibility of the land, is India's most feasible solution to a mounting clean-food crisis.

Well over an hour’s drive from Bengaluru’s central business district, beyond stretches of prelapsarian land, a smooth mud road leads to the Ramdhoota Organic Farm. Here, Manjunatha N, 32, his pants rolled up to his knees, is harvesting bales of enticing greens, free-formed gourds, tomatoes and other such vegetables. Maintaining 7.5 acres of farmland is hard work, but it is his land and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

For close to seven years, Manjunatha grew monocrops and took up civil contracts because farming alone wasn’t enough to sustain him and his family. 
 

Things took a happy turn after he