The answer to many of today's problems begins with the soil under our feet. Healthy soil supports forests, food, and the many species that live on them, us too.
Samam is our effort to teach about this soil, which gives life, and to celebrate it.
One farm: Taranya
Taranya is a permaculture farm in Subraya Nagenahalli, Doddaballapura, Bangalore Rural. Eucalyptus plantations exhausted the land, and nothing grew on it. The members and volunteers of Samam adopted it four years ago.
Today the same ground is green. It gives peanuts, moringa, sapota, bananas, tamarind and starfruit. The people of the village saw it change, and they are starting to believe that their land can change too.
Then the village
Next, we want to take the Taranya way of farming to the families around the farm. Before we do, we listen. Volunteers go door-to-door with us to hear how families live and work, and what they need and hope for.
We think that almost no one in the village grows their own food, that the land and the soil are poor, and that there is no hospital near. The visits tell us if we are right. What we hear decides the first small steps that we take with the village, at the places where Taranya can really help.
A model village
Over time, we want Subraya Nagenahalli to become a model village: a village that lives and farms in a way that heals its land, and that other villages can copy.
Pilgrims already come to the area for Ghati Subramanya. They can become a market for what the village grows.
Then other land
One farm showed that this land can come back. One village can show that a community can live from it. We want to take what we learn to other villages, and to other land that people gave up on.
Learning
Samam teaches what it learns. We plan:
- An introduction to permaculture, a residential weekend at Taranya.
- Training for caretakers, which people in the village asked for.
- A longer course in permaculture design, when we are ready for it.
Who we are
Samam is an initiative of Mahadev Foundation that runs on donations and on the time of its volunteers. We always need more hands.