Source: businessline
Context: With rainfall becoming increasingly unpredictable and temperatures rising, regenerative agriculture is emerging as a way to strengthen soil, water security, biodiversity and farm resilience. The experience of Beforest, a regenerative land restoration initiative, illustrates the approach.
What It Is
- Beforest, founded in 2018, works at the intersection of agriculture, ecology and climate resilience. It has built six collectives across Kodagu, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Bhopal, spanning about 1,300 acres with 196 members.
- What a collective is — per founder and CEO Sunith Reddy: a group of people bound by a shared commitment to regenerative living who co-own and co-manage a single landscape, with a minimum land requirement of about 100 acres.
The Model at Scale
Asked what would follow if every district adopted the model, Reddy described a sequence that becomes a cycle:
- Water security is established — the foundation on which everything else stands.
- Succession progresses — bare soil disappears, green cover thickens, biodiversity climbs.
- New diversity increases seed dispersal, which accelerates green cover, which attracts more diversity.
Regenerative Agriculture
A set of practices aimed at rebuilding soil health, water cycles and biodiversity rather than merely sustaining current yields. Core practices: minimal tillage, permanent soil cover, crop and species diversity, integration of trees and livestock, and elimination of synthetic inputs.
Distinguish from adjacent concepts:
- Organic farming — defined by the absence of synthetic inputs; certification-based.
- Natural farming (ZBNF/Bharatiya Prakritik Krishi Paddhati) — low-cost, input-free, using on-farm preparations such as jeevamrit.
- Agroforestry — integration of trees with crops or livestock.
- Regenerative agriculture — outcome-defined: is soil organic carbon, water retention and biodiversity improving?
Exam Relevance
NABARD Grade A — Very high relevance for Phase II Paper II. This touches several core areas at once: watershed development (NABARD’s flagship, through the Watershed Development Fund), agroforestry, climate-resilient agriculture, and financing gaps in green agriculture. The observation that institutional funding is almost absent from regenerative land restoration is directly a NABARD question — it is precisely the kind of long-gestation, ecology-first investment that commercial lenders avoid and a development bank exists to fund. Connect to NABARD’s role with the Green Climate Fund, Adaptation Fund and NAFCC, and to FPO-based aggregation as the smallholder route to the same practices.
