Lead - S&OP and Project management office at Urban FarmsCo - Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
From Soil to Soul :We are a bio farming-focused social enterprise designed to address three of the world's most pressing concerns – nutrition deficiency, climate change and farmer livelihoods – simultaneously!We do so through a unique, hub-and-spoke model designed to be sustainable and scalable. Regenerative Agriculture:Our farming practices pushes the bar well beyond conventional organic…into standards that are now being recognised as Regenerative Organic (a term initiated by The Rodale Institute). Some of its key dimensions include: companion cropping, crop sequencing, photosynthesis support and soil life enhancement through microbial culture…all of which significantly enhances the bio-availability and nutrient density of the produce. This unique new design was recently awarded the Food System Vision 2050 Prize by Rockefeller Foundation and has been selected as one of the finalists at the Global TFF Challenge 2021 – "How to feed 10 billion people by 2050 on a hotter planet?". This design was born out of two decades of experimentation by Naandi Foundation – a legacy we cherish…It started with the Araku Valley in Andhra Pradesh - where marginalised tribal farmers transformed the region and created a global brand of single origin coffee. A variation of the design was then implemented in a very different terroir – the draught stricken Wardha region of Maharashtra – to transform a highly industrialized mono-cropped landscape into a nutrient-rich regenerative farmscape.Collaborating for the Future:This humble attempt of ours to create a prototype for a food system of the future necessarily includes collaborating with all key actors of the food system such as policy makers, trade and the F&B industry. We look forward to meaningful and creative collaborations with key institutions and individuals and together building a nutrition-secure future – for all.