Social & Community Impact
We are because a farmer is!
At the heart of Akshayakalpa Organic is our community of rural farmers. Our initiatives are designed to keep their needs and interests in mind, to help them create a stream of stable and sufficient income for their families. Our Farm Extension team empowers farmers with resources – technological, mechanical, financial, and academic – which allows them to prioritize the quality of milk and health of their cows. A happy farmer leads to happy cows which leads to clean and safe milk for our consumers.
This farmer-first partnership brings with it some astounding results:
1. We have harnessed the power of communities to build role model farmers. They have in turn motivated tens of farmers in their villages to adopt methods of clean farming.
2. Our innovative model allows for farmers to earn substantial and stable incomes. On average a farmer earns Rs. 1 lakh per month, bringing aspiration back to the farming vocation.
3. We have strict policies that farmers and their families have to adhere to as a part of their partnership with us. This pans from passing hygiene and quality checks to a strict no alcohol policy. The focus of the initiatives is wealth generation for the farmers and these policies are conducive to that.
4. We settle farmer payments on a daily basis, giving them a fixed source of daily income unlike the instability of any other crop they grow. This is one of our founding visions and we are proud to be able to do it every single day.
Waste not, want not!
The practices at Akshayakalpa farms are based largely on the principles of circular economy and co-existence farming to reduce our ecological footprint. Simply put, it is the interdependent relationship between the cow-dung –the soil – the fodder –the milk –the income generated – the farmer family and the farm. We encourage localization of all resources – wherein the day-to-day requirement of the organic farm is met by the farm itself.
A product that has served its purpose should be a part of a new cycle of use. For example, the cow-dung produced by the cows is put through a bio-digester to produce methane gas. This gas is used by the farmers to run machinery and equipment or within the kitchen. The residue sludge is converted to the slurry, which adds to the fertility of the soil at our farms.
The slurry also prepares the soil to sustain bio-diversity. Each of our farms is home to an assorted range of crops to increase the bio-diversity and the family’s food is grown on their very land. This not only provides an additional source of income to the farmer but the ‘waste’ from many of these crops is reused in other ways. Coconut husks, used as mulch, find their way back to the soil as fertilizer.
Through our Akshayakalpa initiatives, we provide farmers with end-to-end technological know-how and guidance to ensure the produce– including the fodder grown for the cows – is cultivated without the use of chemical pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, or herbicides. Because of this, the quality of soil is restored over time, leading to healthy and nutritious produce and milk, the goodness of which is passed along the chain of interdependence.
Innovation is a priority at our Akshayakalpa Organic model farm. It is here we continuously strive towards the betterment of our practices and towards a healthy future for all our consumers. Currently, we have developed and are researching into practices like ‘raised bed farming’ and ‘bee-keeping’ at our 25-acre organic farm, which when implemented by other farmers will be an additional source of supplementary income and an increase in biodiversity.
At Akshayakalpa, we strive to achieve the balance between the two wheels of agriculture – Ecological sustainability and economic sustainability. This is how we create conscious farmers who care about the consumers’ health and their ecological impact while maintaining the integrity of the land!