The sky was low, the earth greasy and sticky. Hills, plains and forests had melted into a uniform soft green. The monsoon, which arrived in mid-June, had plunged the Chhindwara region of Madhya Pradesh, in central India, into a bath of humidity that saves nature and suffocates mankind. No one was complaining. Without this gift from heaven, nothing would grow here, especially not cotton, Madhya Pradesh’s main crop, along with corn and oranges.
A farm worker works the soil in a field at Sagar Dhomne’s organic farm in Jobani, Madhya Pradesh, India, on July 3, 2024. KASIA STREK FOR LE MONDE
In the fields, shoots were already coming out of the ground in early July, and groups of bent-over women in saris were sowing new seeds with a pruning knife, to maximize the future harvest of white gold. The harvest won’t take place until November; until then, the hopes of Chhindwara’s small farmers can be dashed by pests, disease, bad weather and wild animals, especially tigers, of which there are many in this region. The average farm size is less than 1.8 hectares providing a meager income.
Sagar Dhomne, 40 years old, has seen many good years and even more bad ones, yet he approaches the new season with optimism and a smile on his face. In Jobani, a village of 150 families, mainly from the underprivileged caste, he has taken over the small farm he inherited from his grandfather, little more than a hectare of cotton and lentils, bordered by teak trees. The farmer grabbed a handful of soil to show just how loose, rich and alive it was. “Look at all these worms, they help aerate the soil, circulate the water. The soil stays moist.” Pollinators and other useful insects have also returned to the plot.
Until 2019, like his father before him, he grew a genetically modified variety of cotton and sprayed his fields with pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Over the years, his soils became poorer, drier and less fertile. He now only grows organic crops. Dhomne nourishes and protects his plants with locally available natural products: compost made from plant remains, fertilizers made from the fermentation of leaves, trees and cow urine, pest repellents made from cow dung and leaves or medicinal plants.
Volunteer farmers
He has joined a cohort of volunteer farmers, enlisted by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), to try to regenerate a strategic territory, rich in exceptional biodiversity, but weakened by human activities. Madhya Pradesh, for example, is home to India’s largest population of tigers, 785 out of 3,682, according to the latest counts.
A two-hour drive from the large city of Nagpur in Maharashtra, the geographic center of India, the Chhindwara-Sausar region lies between two tiger nature reserves, Satpura and Pench, the oldest on the subcontinent, and is a migration corridor for wildlife. Tigers – as well as leopards, jackals, wolves, hyenas, sloths and four-horned antelopes – may pass through here several times a year, particularly before the onset of the monsoon season, in search of watering holes. The animals may even travel to a third reserve, Melghat, in Maharashtra.
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