Except for Salt, He Buys Nothing: Inside a Himachal Farmer’s Experiment in Self-Reliance

On eight bighas beside a four-lane highway in Mandi district, a young farmer has rejected chemical inputs, diversified production and eliminated market dependence .

BAIHNA (Mandi): Just after sunrise, before traffic thickens on the four-lane highway skirting his house, Tajendra Thakur walks into his field with a hoe resting on his shoulder. Beyond the boundary wall, trucks and buses will soon gather speed. Inside, across eight bighas, the morning is quieter. His wife, Poonam, follows him between rows of crops, stopping occasionally to turn a leaf over or press the soil with her fingers.

What stands out is not a single crop but the absence of uniformity. Wheat and maize grow in blocks, vegetables climb trellises, pulses fill the gaps, and fruit trees mark the edges. By Thakur’s count, 23 kinds of crops and vegetables grow here along with 10 kinds of fruit. There is wheat, maize, barley, kodo millet and rice, besides pulses. Vegetables range from cauliflower and broccoli to okra, radish, turnip, peas, potato, colocasia, capsicum, brinjal and gourds. The fruit trees include mango, guava, banana, pomegranate, orange, sweet lime, plum, peach and dragon fruit.

Asked what he buys from the market, Thakur does not take long to answer. “Salt,” he says. “Nothing else.”

In his early 30s, Thakur is not new to farming. He grew up working in these fields with his parents and, for years, followed the same path as most farmers in the area: chemical-intensive commercial agriculture. Fertilisers and pesticides were part of the routine, and in crops such as cauliflower, he says, spraying had to be done almost every week. “In the beginning, it seems manageable. Then the costs keep rising. Pests become harder to control. One day you realise that whatever you earn is going straight back into inputs,” he says.

He also noticed changes in the land itself. The soil, he says, became hard, “almost like cement”. Water did not percolate the way it used to, and crops seemed to need increasing support just to maintain yields. Around the same time, concerns about health began to weigh on him more heavily. After his marriage, he started thinking about the food his family was eating and what that would mean for his children in the future. “I had decided that my children should not grow up eating food produced with so many chemicals,” he says. Before his son was born, he stopped using them altogether.

The transition was not guided by any formal training at first. Thakur began by watching online videos on natural farming methods — on preparing jeevamrit and beejamrit, on mulching, on mixed cropping and on ways of restoring life to the soil. In 2018, he joined the Himachal Pradesh government’s natural farming initiative. Since then, all eight bighas of his land have been managed without chemical fertilisers or pesticides.

“The fear is real in the beginning,” he says. “People tell you yields will fall; insects will destroy crops. But when you grow many crops together and keep the soil covered, nature starts balancing things on its own.” His field today reflects that approach. No single crop dominates. Cereals, vegetables and pulses are intercropped, and fruit trees are interspersed to provide shade and structure. The diversity, he says, reduces risk and dependence on external inputs.

The economics of the farm have changed along with its ecology. Thakur estimates that he earns up to ₹60,000 a month from selling surplus produce. Just as important, he says, is the fact that his household no longer depends on the market for everyday food. In the kitchen, the difference is routine rather than symbolic. “Whatever cooks on our stove is grown by us, without chemicals,” Poonam says. “It feels like the right decision. There is a different satisfaction in eating what your own land produces.”

Their children move freely through the fields, sometimes plucking vegetables and eating them raw. “We don’t worry,” she says. “There is no fear about what is on that food.” For Thakur, this is as significant as the income. “Money matters,” he says. “But if your health is getting worse and your land is getting weaker every year, then something is wrong with the system.”

His experiment is part of a broader shift underway in Himachal Pradesh. The state government says around 2.25 lakh farmers have adopted natural farming practices in recent years. To encourage the transition, it has announced what it describes as the country’s highest minimum support price for naturally grown grains, reported to be nearly three times the MSP for conventionally produced wheat set by the Centre. The state has also launched marketing initiatives under brands such as ‘Him Bhog’ and ‘Him Prakritik’, under which products like dalia, wheat flour, maize flour, barley flour and turmeric are being sold.

“This kind of assurance matters,” Thakur says. “When there is a clear price and a market, farmers are more willing to change how they farm.”

In Mandi district, farms like his are increasingly being used as demonstration sites. Dr Rakesh Kumar, District Project Director of the Agriculture Department’s ATMA project, says such models help persuade farmers who are unsure about shifting away from chemicals. “We now have several good natural farming examples in the district,” he says. “Farmers like Tajendra become reference points. We bring other farmers here so they can see for themselves how this approach works.”

By late afternoon, the highway outside Thakur’s field hums with steady traffic. Goods and commuters move past at speed, largely indifferent to the small patch of land beyond the road’s edge. Inside the field, the pace is slower. Thakur walks the rows, checks leaves for pests, feels the soil, adjusts a support for a climbing plant.

“We are not against development,” he says. “But if we cannot protect our food, our soil and our children’s health, then we need to ask what kind of development this is.”

His eight bighas lie between a house and a highway, between two ideas of progress. One is measured in speed and volume. The other is built on diversity, soil health and a degree of self-reliance that has reduced his dependence on the market to a single item.

Except for salt, Tajendra Thakur buys nothing — and in today’s rural economy, that is less a slogan than a carefully worked-out calculation.