The sky is low, the earth greasy and sticky. Hills, plains and forests have blended into a soft, uniform green. The monsoon, which arrived in mid-June, plunged the Chhindwara region of Madhya Pradesh in central India into a bath of moisture that is beneficial to nature and suffocating to humans. No one complains about it; without this gift from heaven, nothing would grow here, least of all cotton, the main crop of Madhya Pradesh, along with corn and oranges.
In the fields, plants are already sprouting from the ground in early July, and groups of women in saris, bent over, are sowing new seeds by pruning them, to maximize the future harvest of white gold. This will not happen before November; until then, many dangers could destroy the hopes of Chhindwara’s small farmers: pests, diseases, bad weather and wild animals, particularly tigers, which are abundant in this region. The average farm size is less than 1.8 hectares and provides a meager income.
Sagar Dhomne, 40, has had good years and even darker ones, yet he faces the new season with optimism and a smile on his face. In Jobani, a village of 150 families, mostly from underprivileged castes, he has taken over the small farm inherited from his grandfather, a little over one hectare of cotton and lentils, surrounded by teak trees. The farmer grabs a handful of soil to show how loose, rich and alive it is. “Look at all these worms, they help aerate the soil and circulate the water. The soil stays moist.” Pollinators and other beneficial insects have also returned to the plot.
Until 2019, like his father before him, he used a genetically modified variety of cotton and sprayed his fields with pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Over the years, his soils have become poorer, dried out, becoming less and less fertile. From now on, he only grows organically. Sagar Dhomne feeds and protects his plants. with locally available natural products: compost made from plant remains, fertilizers from the fermentation of leaves, trees and cow urine, antiparasitics made from cow excrement and leaves or medicinal plants.
Volunteer farmers
He joined a cohort of volunteer farmers recruited by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to try to regenerate a strategic territory, rich in exceptional biodiversity but weakened by human activities. Madhya Pradesh is home to India’s largest tiger population, 785 out of 3,682, according to the latest counts.
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